New York, Mar 11 : French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni have been branded Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette after the couple spent the weekend in a 5,500-dollar-a-night beach-front villa in Mexico.

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy is widely expected to announce later on Wednesday that France is returning to NATO's command structure 43 years after Charles de Gaulle pulled Paris out and evicted US military bases from French soil.

Sarkozy will probably make the announcement during an address at the conference "France, European Defence and NATO in the 21st Century," at the Ecole Miliaire in Paris, in the presence of NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Mexico City  - A picture is worth a thousand words and although French President Nicolas Sarkozy delivered several speeches during his visit to Mexico, it was his wife, former top model Carla Bruni, who monopolized the front pages of the Mexican press Tuesday.

Several newspapers did not even publish photos of Sarkozy with the information on his official visit. Bruni, with her pink blouse and dress, was featured in all the dailies.

Paris - French police have arrested a man in the southern city of Montpellier in regard to death threats sent to President Nicolas Sarkozy and several other conservative officials in recent days, France Info radio reported on Tuesday, citing police sources.

The arrest came after Sarkozy, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, Justice Minister Rachida Dati, Culture Minister Christine Albanel and the mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppe, all received letters containing implicit threats to their lives and 9mm bullets.

Paris - When French President Nicolas Sarkozy travels to Mexico on Sunday, one of his goals will be to obtain the transfer to France of a 34-year-old French woman convicted of kidnapping there.

"(The aim) of the French government, of the president of the Republic, is clearly to obtain Florence Cassez's transfer to France. There are arrangements which allow for this," government spokesman Luc Chatel told RFI radio.

Paris, Mar 4 : Francois Perol, French President Nicolas Sarkozy''s Chief Economic Adviser, poked fun at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown''s failed attempts to eat Savoyard Fondue, a French cheese dish laid on for him by Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni.

Savoyard Fondue is a mixture of Alpine cheese and white wine eaten by spearing pieces of bread with a skewer and dipping them in the hot pot.