Paris  - An 85-year-old French man who is hard of hearing mistook a firefighter for a burglar and shot him to death, a police spokeswoman from the southern French city of Belley said on Wednesday.

Neighbours had called rescue workers because they were worried about the health of the old man. When he did not respond to shouts at the door, the firemen broke into the apartment.

The old man mistook the noise for a break-in, locked himself in a room and fired a shot that struck and killed one of the firefighters.

Paris  - As expected, lawmakers in the French National Assembly voted late Tuesday in favour of a measure that effectively approved President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to return France to NATO's military command structure.

By a vote of 329 to 238, the deputies passed a vote of confidence in the foreign policy conducted by Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his government, including the decision to return to full NATO membership.

In 1966, then-president Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of the alliance's military command and evicted US bases from French soil.

Paris  - As expected, lawmakers in the French National Assembly voted late Tuesday in favour of a measure that effectively approved President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to return France to NATO's military command structure.

By a vote of 329 to 238, the deputies passed a vote of confidence in the foreign policy conducted by Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his government, including the decision to return to full NATO membership.

In 1966, then-president Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of the alliance's military command and evicted US bases from French soil.

Berlin/Paris - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy stepped up their call for next month's summit of the world's most powerful economies to agree to concrete measures for overhauling the global financial sector.

In a joint letter ahead of the Group of 20 (G20) richest and emerging economies' summit in London, Merkel and Sarkozy said the meeting needed to produce "concrete results for reinforcing international financial regulation" and to draw up an action plan aimed at strengthening the role of global financial institutions.

Paris - The French Parliament is widely expected to approve President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to return France to NATO's military command structure when it votes on the measure later on Thursday.

Because Sarkozy's UMP party and its centre-right allies have a substantial majority in both houses of Parliament, the result of the vote is a foregone conclusion.

Paris - French physicist Bernard Espagnat was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize, worth 1 million pounds (1.41 million dollars), the John Templeton Foundation announced in Paris on Monday.

The 87-year-old Espagnat was named the recipient of the world's most generous individual scientific award for his work in the field of quantum mechanics, particularly for his experimental proofs on Bell inequalities.

Bell inequalities concern measurements made on pairs of particles and were derived from the original Bell's inequality, devised by the late physicist John Bell, regarding an apparently inherent contradiction in quantum mechanics.