Marseilles (France), Sept 29: Visiting Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh will address the Ninth India-European Union Summit here today, a day before India and France ink a landmark agreement to conduct bilateral nuclear trade with each other.

The two-day Ninth India- EU Summit, hosted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, opens in Marseilles today.

According to Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Commissioner for External Relations and the Neighbourhood Policy, the European Union views India as a vital partner.

Washington, Sept. 26 : India and France will discuss nuclear cooperation during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh''s visit to Paris, said Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon.

"It is on the agenda. We are working on it with them for some time.

Paris - After several delays caused by bad weather, Swiss adventurer Yves Rossi - also known as Fusionman - on Friday became the first person to fly solo across the English Channel between Britain and France using a single jet-propelled wing, French media reported.

Rossy, 49, leaped from a plane at more than 2,500 metres above the French port of Calais, fired up the jets on his home-made wing and landed 13 minutes later at Dover in southern Britain.

Rossy, a former Swiss airline pilot, followed the flight path of French aviation pioneer Louis Bleriot, who became the first person to fly across the Channel in a plane in 1909.

Brussels - The French presidency of the European Union said Friday there would be no delay to a planned ban by 2012 of the tiny "battery" cages used by many producers for laying hens.

"I would not like us to go back on that date. I would not like to see it postponed. The council position is that battery farming should cease on that day," French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier told the European Parliament.

Animal rights activists have long campaigned against the use of conventional battery cages, where floor space is the equivalent of a sheet of A4 paper. This prevents hens from making even the most basic of movements, such as spreading their wings or even turning around.

Paris - The French economy contracted by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of the year, the first quarter of negative GDP growth since 2002, the government's statistical office INSEE announced on Friday.

The announcement could be the first of a series of bad news for France's economy. French radio reported Friday that the unemployment figures to be made public on Monday will be the worst in 10 years, with up to 40,000 adults added to the jobless rolls in August.

On Thursday, in a speech on the current economic crisis, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that the turmoil in the American finance sector would affect French economic growth, joblessness and purchasing power.

Toulon, France - The economic turmoil provoked by crises in the American sub-prime and finance markets has put an end to the free- market economy, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday in the southern French city of Toulon.

"Laissez-faire is finished, the all-powerful market that is always right, that's finished," Sarkozy said in a widely anticipated speech, his first in France on the economic crisis.