London, Feb 16: British and French nuclear submarines armed with ballistic missiles threatened to cause a disaster after colliding in the Atlantic, it emerged last night.

The Britsh Royal Navy's HMS Vanguard and the French Navy's Le Triomphant are both nuclear powered and were carrying nuke missiles when the collision took place on February 3-4.

The crash is believed to have occurred after state-of-the-art technology fitted in both vessels, which is designed to detect other submarines, apparently failed completely

Val d'Isere, France  - Maria Riesch got gold at last at a big event when she won the slalom world title on Saturday from sixth place after the first run.

The German Riesch took the gold with the fastest second run in a combined total 1 minute 51.80 seconds. Defending champion Sarka Zahrobska took silver in 1:52.57 minutes and Tanja Poutiainen of Finland was third in 1:52.89 minutes.

Riesch also won because the top three from the first run met disaster.

Hamburg  - French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to stay away from celebrations of 60 years of NATO unless he was given a choice seat at the conference table, the German news weekly Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

It said Sarkozy objected to seating in alphabetical order of the member country's names and insisted that he must sit next to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer during the meeting in early April in Strasbourg, France and in nearby German towns.

Val d'Isere, France - Maria Riesch got gold at last at a big event when she won

Val d'Isere, France - Carlo Janka of Switzerland won the world championship giant slalom on Friday, exactly two months after getting his first World Cup win on the same hill.

Janka, 22, led the way after the first run and hung on to it in the second despite a mistake, winning in a combined total 2 minutes 18.82 seconds to take the gold after downhill bronze on Saturday.

Olympic champion Benjamin Raich gave the Austrian men their first medal in Val d'Isere, a silver in 1:19.53. Ted Ligety of the United States rose from ninth to third in 2:19.81 minutes.

Paris - The wife of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, journalist Christine Ockrent, is to become general director of the state-owned TV all-news station France 24, the online edition of the weekly Le Point reported on Friday.

Ockrent, who will turn 65 in April, will not answer to her husband's ministry, but will be directly under the office of Prime Minister Francois Fillon, the weekly reported.