PARIS, Dec 18 (Reuters) – A Paris court on Friday found U.S. Internet giant Google <GOOG.O> guilty of violating copyright by digitising books and putting extracts online, following a legal challenge by major French publishers.

The court ruled against Google’s French unit after the La Martiniere group, which controls the highbrow Editions du Seuil publishing house, argued that publishers and authors were losing out in the latest stage of the digital revolution.

Google was ordered to pay 300,000 euros ($431,700) in damages and interest, far less than the 15 million euro fine sought by plaintiffs. It must stop reproducing any copyrighted material by French publishers it has not struck deals with.

The popular search engine announced it would appeal, but Friday’s ruling will be enforced immediately pending any further court action.

“We believe giving online users access to very short extracts from works is in line with copyright,” Google lawyer Benjamin du Chauffaut said. “French online users will be the only ones deprived of a great part of their literary heritage.”

Shares in Google were up 2.24 percent at $596.19 by 1615 GMT. An executive said they would need to study the ruling before being able to comment on the business impact.

La Martiniere, the French Publishers’ Association and authors’ groups SGDL had argued that Google was exploiting that heritage, and called scanning an act of reproduction.

PARIS (Reuters) – Mounir Moufarrige, president and chief executive of French fashion house Emanuel Ungaro, has resigned just over two months after a widely panned collection by American actress Lindsay Lohan.

Ungaro said in a statement on Wednesday that Moufarrige would continue to advise the company, which has gone through several stylists and two chief executives since couturier Emanuel Ungaro retired in 2004.

A spokeswoman for Ungaro said Moufarrige’s departure had nothing to do with Lohan.

“Mounir Moufarrige has withdrawn from serving as president of Emanuel Ungaro in order to devote more time to his other businesses, namely, in the watch and jewelry industry,” the statement said.

Moufarrige hired Lohan as artistic adviser for the spring/summer 2010 show in October. His stated aim was to give the aging brand an “electric shock” that would jolt sales and pull in young, star-struck fashionistas.

Lohan had only weeks to put the collection together, advising chief designer Estrella Archs. The resulting buttocks-exposing mini-dresses and heart-shaped nipple pasties were not deemed a success by fashion critics.

While fans of Paris couture were aghast, lamenting the demise of a legendary fashion house, Moufarrige voiced optimism after the show and pointed to global interest in Lohan and her style.

PARIS (Reuters) – French and German leaders joined together on Armistice Day for the first time to remember their war dead Wednesday, and pledged to work more closely together as partners in Europe.

To the sound of the national anthems of the two former enemies, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy laid down a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

It was the first time a German leader had attended France’s Armistice Day, marking the end of World War One hostilities on the Western Front on November 11, 1918.

“We gather this November to commemorate not the victory of one people over another, but hardship that was as terrible for one side as it was for the other,” Sarkozy said in a speech.

“German orphans cried over the death of their fathers in combat just as French orphans did,” he added.

Germany’s suffering was long a taboo, given that it started both world wars. It has only in recent years become the subject of public discussion, as a new generation finds its own way of remembering the brutality and loss of millions of lives.

A visibly moved Merkel shook the hands of frail, grey-haired veterans of World War Two.

PARIS (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned France’s ambassador months before German’s 1990 reunification of a domineering Chancellor Helmut Kohl who “sees himself as the master,” diplomatic notes revealed Thursday.

In secret archives unveiled to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov 9., 1989, French diplomats describe an “obsessed” and “bitter” Thatcher’s fear of a united Germany and her proposal to join forces with Russia to contain the threat.

“Kohl is capable of anything,” France’s ambassador to Britain, Luc de La Barre de Nanteuil, quoted Thatcher as telling him during a dinner with French businessmen at his residence in London on March 13, 1990.

“He has become a different man, he does not know himself any more, he sees himself as the master and begins to act like that. You have to see for example how he behaves with (then Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev,” she said according to the confidential report.

Nanteuil was struck by Thatcher’s bitterness, noting that while she was pleased with the end of communism, she did not express any joy over eastern Europe’s new-found freedom.

“The 1990s begin with euphoria, they risk ending in catastrophe,” said Thatcher, whose anti-European Union stance culminated in her forced resignation in December 1990.

France and Britain, western Europe’s two nuclear powers, needed to link up in the face of the “German danger,” but this alone would not be enough, she told Nanteuil.

PARIS (Reuters) – France and Germany urged Iran on Monday to accept a U.N.-brokered proposal to enrich its nuclear fuel abroad rather than lose time by asking for a further round of talks.

The comments from Germany’s new Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner came in response to Iran’s request for more negotiations, which added to doubts that a compromise could be found any time soon.

“We are waiting for Iran to formally accept the agreement,” Kouchner told a joint news conference, which the two held after a bilateral meeting in Paris.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has drawn up plans for Iran to send potential nuclear fuel to Russia and France for processing. Kouchner pointed out that the proposal was backed by France, the United States, Russia and Germany.

“We are waiting for a reply. If the reply is aimed at delaying matters, as we believe, then we will not accept it,” Kouchner said, adding that Iran would only be losing time by prolonging the talks.

Westerwelle cited last week’s statement by European leaders pressing Iran to accept the deal.

He said he had nothing to add to the common position adopted by the leaders, who promised Iran that progress on the nuclear fuel deal would open the way to cooperation with the EU.

PARIS (Reuters) – Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is positioning himself as a challenger to Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential election, using a political trial to re-launch his career.

While awaiting a verdict on the accusation that he tried to smear Sarkozy before the last election, Villepin has seized a shift in the public mood to attack the president and raise the prospect of an internal split in the French right.

“I want to work toward an alternative force,” he told French radio on Wednesday after a battle-cry speech on Tuesday.

If the trial, during which Villepin counter-accused Sarkozy of wanting to hang him “from a butcher’s hook,” is anything to go by, the campaign should see some interesting rhetoric.

Political analyst Stephane Rozes, director of the Cap political consultancy, said Villepin’s strategy was to use the “Clearstream” smear trial as a platform to present himself as an alternative to Sarkozy and get to the policy details later.

“This is the launch of a movement with a view to a candidacy in 2012,” Rozes told Reuters.

But while aristocratic, poetry-writing Villepin could not be more different from hyperactive, elite-bashing Sarkozy in terms of personal style, their policy differences are less marked.

PARIS (Reuters) – France and Britain deported three Afghan illegal migrants on a first joint flight Tuesday night as part of an immigration crackdown that has drawn fire from human rights groups.

The secretive operation was part of wider Anglo-French cooperation over immigration, a hot-button issue in relations since thousands of migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries use France as a launch pad to cross the channel.

The flight “left Roissy airport at midnight with three Afghans, three male adults, on board, and will take them back to their country of origin,” French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said on Europe 1 radio, adding that Britain had chartered the plane.

The flight angered activists and French opposition Socialists who pointed to the worsening security in Afghanistan. Previous protests forced France to withdraw at the last minute.

France and Britain, two major contributors of troops in Afghanistan, agreed in July to toughen border controls and jointly deport migrants. France also cleared a tent city near the port of Calais where migrants tried to cross the channel.

Besson has said migrants will be returned to safe places. The three who were deported Tuesday lived in France.

“This is a disgrace for France, we cannot treat men and women like this,” Socialist leader Martine Aubry said on France 2 television Wednesday. “I want to point out that they don’t come here to bother us but to flee war, misery and poverty.”

PARIS (Reuters) – A new exhibition at the gilded Chateau de Versailles outside Paris for the first time brings together hundreds of artworks owned by Louis XIV, the “Sun King” who remains one of France’s most flamboyant monarchs.

A fierce ruler whose exclamation, “L’etat, c’est moi” (“I am the State”), summarizes a concept of power that still permeates French politics, Louis XIV was also a ballet dancer whose private tastes at times diverged from the official line.

“Louis XIV has suffered from a very negative image, an image of the king as absolute, frightening, almost like a despot,” curator Nicolas Milovanovic told Reuters. “That’s one of the reasons why there’s never before been an exhibition.”

Some 300 artworks were retrieved from all over Europe for the show at Versailles, which the king transformed from a hunting lodge into the dazzling heart of an absolutist state.

Even with the monarchist rule gone, the exhibition evokes its continuing influence on French culture — President Nicolas Sarkozy himself chose Versailles as the backdrop for a policy speech earlier this year.

“Louis XIV implemented a political regime that was very typically French,” said Jean-Jacques Aillagon, president of Versailles, standing next to a marble bust of the king. “In his hands, he held much of the political, religious, military, economic and even cultural power.”

Among the most intriguing exhibits are a golden bodice and matching short skirt worn as a ballet costume by the young king. A wax relief complete with human grey hair and a glass eye shows the aging Louis, pock-marked and stubble-chinned.

PARIS (Reuters) – Two-thirds of French people do not want Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand to resign for having written about paying young male prostitutes for sex in Thailand, an opinion poll showed Monday.

Mitterrand has rejected calls for his resignation, sparked by revelations in his 2005 autobiography, “The Bad Life,” and said the male prostitutes were consenting adults.

The French government has also come out in support of Mitterrand, who has threatened legal action to protect his reputation.

The controversy surfaced after Mitterrand defended film-maker Roman Polanski, who faces extradition from Switzerland to the United States for having had sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Both the far-right National Front party and main Socialist opposition party said he should step down.

However, 67 percent of French people do not want Mitterrand to resign, against 20 percent who think he should, according to the survey of 1,005 people carried out by pollster BVA on October 9-10.

Mitterrand has called his experiences in Thailand, described in the book that mixes autobiography and more dreamlike reflection, as “a mistake, certainly, a crime, no.”

PARIS (Reuters) – If you’ve got it, flaunt it and sell it: that was the message at Paris fashion week as collections teemed with lacy stockings, bra straps and exposed knickers.

Garter belts — real, worked into dresses or painted onto skin — featured heavily at Sonia Rykiel, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Christian Dior and Chanel.

At Chanel, designer Karl Lagerfeld mixed innocent white folk dresses with tattoo-like garters and high-cut knickers in a countryside romp, complete with models canoodling in a haystack.

“I’m completely with it,” Russian model Natalia Vodianova said of the lingerie trend.”A woman has to be elegant and not wear it in a vulgar way.”

Presenting her new lingerie line for retailer Etam, Vodianova told reporters she felt inspired by women who showed a glimpse of their underwear or exposed their bra straps.

The Milan collections featured so many skimpy dresses that fashion critics dubbed the overarching theme “Viva la Bimbo.”

Micro-dresses also abounded in Paris for spring/summer 2010, with Lagerfeld inserting slits into already tiny skirts at Chanel. Dior showed sleek negligee dresses and high-waisted French knickers, evoking the boudoirs of 1950s film stars.