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).

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Gap Inc (GPS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said
soaring cotton and petroleum costs might hurt margins in fiscal
2011, as it struggles to re-energize growth, offsetting a
higher-than-expected 4 percent jump in quarterly earnings.

The shares of the operator of the Gap, Old Navy and Banana
Republic brands, which in 2010 was overtaken by Spanish fashion
label Zara in global sales worldwide, gained about 2 percent
in after-hours trading.

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Blame the high price of
cotton for T-shirts that might feel just a bit scratchier this
spring, or pants that seem to stretch out after one washing.

As manufacturers tinker with fabrics to limit the use of
pricey cotton, they risk compromising quality. Synthetics are
less expensive than natural fibers, but associated with cheap
clothing in the minds of consumers.

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) – EBay Inc thrust its PayPal business into the limelight on Thursday, saying the online payments unit would surpass its main marketplaces division within three to five years as executives cast the Web company as an innovator.

Shares of eBay, which over the past two years has sought to shed an image of an Internet has-been, jumped nearly 8 percent during an investor meeting at eBay’s San Jose, California headquarters, after executives said PayPal revenue could double by 2013.

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) – EBay Inc said it expects revenue at its PayPal unit to double by 2013 as it sought on Thursday to cast itself as a reinvented company and an innovator at the center of e-commerce.

Shares of eBay, which over the past two years has been seeking to shed an image of an Internet has-been, jumped nearly 8 percent following the PayPal comments during an investor meeting at its San Jose, California, headquarters.

SAN JOSE, Feb 10 (Reuters) – EBay Inc (EBAY.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), seeking to
cast off a perception that it is behind the curve, strove on
Thursday to cast itself as a reinvented company and an
innovator at the center of tech-driven e-commerce.

It also said it expected revenue at its PayPal unit to
reach $6 to $7 billion by 2013.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Jeans maker Levi Strauss & Co said on Tuesday that fourth-quarter net profit rose 28 percent, helped by strength in the company’s U.S. Levi’s retail business and improved wholesale sales in Europe.

Despite the positive results during the holiday quarter, the economic recovery around the world was still “tenuous,” said Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen.