Paris - The public prosecutor's office of Paris on Tuesday demanded that former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin stand trial for slander, the internet site of the daily Le Figaro reported.

Villepin, who was the diplomatic pointman of France's opposition to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, is suspected of involvement in a complex scheme allegedly hatched to discredit French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The so-called Clearstream Affair dates back to 2004, when Sarkozy's name appeared on a list of 800 people and companies allegedly holding accounts at the Luxembourg-based financial clearing house Clearstream.

Paris - One day after suffering the largest single-day loss in its 21-year-history, the Paris Bourse's benchmark CAC 40 was trying to rebound in early trading on Tuesday.

One hour after opening, the CAC 40 was up 1.64 per cent, to 3,773, with advancing issues outpacing losers by 3 to 1.

French-Belgian financial services group Dexia again led the declining issues, down more than 5 per cent, at 6.46 euros (8.75 dollars).

Brussels - Belgium's former Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene is to head the board of the struggling Franco-Belgian financial service group Dexia, Belgium's Prime Minister Yves Leterme announced Tuesday after an overnight crisis meeting in Brussels.

French banker and BNP Paribas executive Pierre Mariani is to serve as as chief executive. Mariani is currently a senior executive vice president at France's largest bank, BNP Paribas, France's largest bank.

Paris, Oct 7 : The COROT space telescope has discovered a massive planet-sized object orbiting its parent star closely, unlike anything ever spotted before, leaving scientists puzzled as to whether this oddity is actually a planet or a failed star.

The object, named COROT-exo-3b, is about the size of Jupiter, but packs more than 20 times the mass. It takes only 4 days and 6 hours to orbit its parent star, which is slightly larger than the Sun.

Paris  - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday congratulated Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, who were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discovery of the retrovirus that causes AIDS.

After extending his "heartiest congratulations," in his own name and that of the nation, Sarkozy noted, in a statement released by his office, that it was the first Nobel Prize for Medicine awarded to a French team since 1980.

"The discovery of the AIDS virus at the beginning of the 1980s marked the start of a period of intense research that led to the creation of anti-retrovirus treatments," Sarkozy said. "Today millions of people around the world are benefiting from these treatments."

Paris - French virologists Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, who were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine, will always be associated with the discovery of the retrovirus that causes AIDS.

In 1982, Montagnier headed a team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, of which Barre-Sinoussi was a member, that was asked for assistance in establishing the possible viral cause of a mysterious new syndrome, AIDS.