Paris - The European Union was one island richer Sunday after the mostly Muslim citizens of the Mayotte islands in the Indian Ocean voted for full integration into the French nation.

The 374-square-kilometre island group is geographically part of the Comoros islands, between Madagascar and northern Mozambique.

But it has been politically separate since the 1970s, when it voted against independence. It has belonged to France since 1841

London, March 28: French surgeons have carried out the world’s fifth face transplant, and given a 28-year-old man a new nose, mouth and chin after his original features were blown off in a shooting accident.

The surgery, which marked the third face transplant in France, took place at the Henri Mondor Hospital, near Paris.

Doctors at the hospital spent 15 hours giving the man a new face, after the accident had destroyed the muscles in the man''s mouth, which prevented him from moving his jaw.

Paris  - After a tumultuous seven-week trial, a Paris appeals court late Friday sentenced a Corsican shepherd, Yvan Colonna, to life in prison for the 1998 murder of the prefect of that Mediterranean island.

The sentence therefore upheld the judgment delivered in the first trial, in 2007, that the 48-year-old Colonna was the man who fired three bullets into the head and neck of the prefect, Claude Erignac, in a street in the city of Ajaccio on February 6, 1998.

Nairobi/Niamey - French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Niger Friday to back a deal by French firm Areva to exploit uranium deposits in the north of the West African country.

Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive officer of Areva, is travelling with Sarkozy on the whistle-stop tour that saw him also visit the Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of Congo.

Lauvergeon on Thursday signed an agreement with the Congolese Minister of Mines, Martin Kabwelulu, on the prospecting and mining of DR Congo's sizeable uranium reserves.

Paris - The bishop of the French city of Orleans, Monsignor Andre Fort, rekindled a row sparked by Pope Benedict XVI by telling a French radio station on Friday that condoms were ineffective in the prevention of AIDS.

"You know very well, and all the scientists know it: the AIDS virus is infinitely smaller than a sperm. This is proof that the condom is not a 100 per cent guarantie against AIDS," the bishop told Radio France.

Paris - French-Dutch carrier Air France-KLM said on Thursday that it expects to register an operating loss of about 200 million euros (270 million dollars) for fiscal year
2008-2009 because of the effects of the economic crisis and variations in the cost of crude oil.

If confirmed, it would represent the first such negative result for the company since it was formed in 2003.

Air France-KLM is also pessimistic for 2009-2010, "which will begin in the context of an unprecedented crisis," the company said in a statement.