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.

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.

Paris - Gas tanker workers for the French utility GDF-Suez are going on strike to protest the awarding of more than 1.1 million stock options to the company's two senior executives, the online edition of the daily Le Figaro reported on Thursday.

The attribution of 830,000 stock options to company head Gerard Mestrallet and 300,000 to his vice president, Jean-Francois Cirelli, has provoked anger among employees, who are in the process of negotiating with the firm about a pay rise of 7.5 per cent and a one-time payment of 1,500 euros.

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Paris  - The French labour market shed nearly 80,000 jobs in February, the Labour Ministry announced on Wednesday.

As a result of the tenth consecutive monthly rise in French unemployment, more than 2.38 million active job-seekers are now registered as unemployed in France.

The announcement follows France's worst-ever monthly increase in unemployment in January, when more than 90,000 new jobless were registered.

The French government is predicting the loss of some 300,000 jobs for 2009, but many observers feel that this forecast is far too optimistic.