PARIS, May 15 (Reuters) – French voters of all stripes were
shocked on Sunday by news that a man opinion polls had predicted
could be the country’s next president had been charged with
sexually assaulting a hotel chambermaid in the United States.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York
after a maid alleged he had chased her naked down a hotel
hallway, sexually assaulted her and tried to lock her in a hotel
room. [nN15215355]

PARIS (Reuters) – Airbus parent EADS (EAD.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) saw its capacity for acquisitions boosted by a record 12.2 billion euro (10.7 billion pound) cash pile on Friday, weeks after governments agreed to bail out losses on a major defence project.

Swelled by deposits from airlines ready to invest in new aircraft, the growing riches of Europe’s largest aerospace company confirm an industry rebound which sent its shares up 5 percent on Friday, together with upbeat quarterly results.

PARIS, May 13 (Reuters) – Airbus parent EADS (EAD.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) saw
its capacity for acquisitions boosted by a record 12.2 billion
euro (17.3 billion) cash pile disclosed with upbeat results on
Friday, weeks after governments bailed out a troubled project.

The news could create a headache for the company, which in
April signed a deal with seven European nations for a 3.5
billion euro bailout of its A400M military aircraft programme
and is expected to receive European loans for its A350 airliner.

PARIS (Reuters) – Relatives of some of the 228 people killed in a Rio-Paris jet crash voiced hope Thursday that their two-year wait for an explanation may soon be over as experts prepared to open the aircraft’s “black box” recorders.

Investigators into the crash of Air France flight 447 over the Atlantic in June 2009 said they were optimistic at least some of the data could be retrieved but interpreting it could take months.

PARIS (Reuters) – Investigators of an Air France crash into the Atlantic two years ago will begin to decode black-box flight recorders but say it will take months and there was no guarantee of finding what caused the destruction of the flight with 228 people on board.

The two orange cockpit voice and flight data recorders, preserved in demineralised water after their recovery from the ocean’s depths nearly two weeks ago, were displayed in public for the first time Thursday.

PARIS (Reuters) – Pakistan’s prime minister defended on Wednesday his country’s failure to spot Osama bin Laden hiding out in a luxury compound near Islamabad, saying the whole world was to blame for any intelligence failure.

Pakistan is under pressure from the West to explain how bin Laden, who was killed this week in a U.S. raid on his hideout, could have lived for several years in a military garrison town near the Pakistani capital without its intelligence finding out.

PARIS (Reuters) – A set of love letters penned by Edith Piaf to her cycling champion lover Louis Gerardin have been published in France, where the late singer is as famous for her anguished love affairs as for her mournful ballads.

The great chanteuse’s passionate months-long affair with the married Gerardin inspired a torrent of flowery, emotional missives, dotted with spelling mistakes and crossings-out, that reveal Piaf’s fragility and desperate need to be loved back.

PARIS (Reuters) – Pakistan’s prime minister defended his country’s failure to spot that Osama bin Laden had been hiding out in a luxury compound near Islamabad, saying that fighting terrorism was the whole world’s responsibility.

Pakistan is under pressure from the West to explain how bin Laden, who was killed this week in a U.S. raid on his hideout, could have lived for several years in a military garrison town near the Pakistani capital without local intelligence finding out.

PARIS/ALGIERS (Reuters) – France promised Libyan rebels on Wednesday it would intensify air strikes on Muammar Gaddafi’s forces and send military liaison officers to help them as fighting raged in the besieged city of Misrata.

Rebels said they fought pro-government troops for control of a main thoroughfare in the port city that is the insurgents’ last stronghold in the west of the country. Eight people had been killed the previous day, mostly civilians.

* Energy from effluence under Paris to provide heating

* Presidential palace next on list to use technology

By Alexandria Sage

PARIS, April 5 (Reuters Life!) – The Paris sewers — whose
murky labyrinths have been reviled and romanticized through
history — are at the centre of a renewable energy experiment to
harness heat for buildings, including the presidential palace.

Paris wants green sources to fuel 30 percent of its energy
needs by 2020 and a new heating project at a primary school is
the city’s first using power from sewers, where temperatures
average between 12 and 20 degrees Celsius (53 to 68 Fahrenheit).