Paris - After last-minute adjustments to secure EU approval, France on Thursday began implementing its bank bail-out plan.

Under the plan, the state will subscribe to subordinated five-year debt totalling 10.5 billion euros (13.75 billion dollars) issued by the country's six largest banks.

The debt subscription concerns the banks Credit Agricole (3 billion euros), BNP Paribas (2.55 billion), Societe Generale (1.7 billion), Credit Mutuel (1.2 billion), Caisses d'Epargne (1.1 billion and Banques Populaires (0.95 billion), the French Finance Ministry said.

In exchange, the French banks have committed themselves to increasing their loans to individuals and companies by 3 to 4 per cent by the end of 2009.

Paris - The French co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Stephane Hessel, was on Wednesday awarded a UNESCO prize for his life's work.

The 91-year-old Hessel, who was honoured on the 60th anniversary of the document, said that it remained difficult today to implement human rights in the world.

As one example, he criticized France for its handling of illegal immigrants.

"Immigrants are not treated as they should be," said Hessel, whose mother was German. "The problem will be be even more important in the future, because climate change will provoke more migration."

Paris - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was quoted Wednesday as saying that he had made a mistake in asking President Nicolas Sarkozy to create a ministry for human rights.

"I think I was wrong to ask for a junior minister for human rights. It's a mistake. Because there is a permanent contradiction between human rights and a nation's foreign policy, even in France," Kouchner said in an interview published in the daily Le Parisien on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Melbourne, Dec 10 : French scientists are trying to develop self-cleaning windows and windshields – with the help of butterfly wings.

Butterfly wings – and lotus leaves – can repel water with ease because of the microstructures on their surface.

The waffle-like structures found on butterfly wings can make it difficult for water droplets to spread out.

Paris  -

Bogota  - Wilson Bueno Largo, a young former member of Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels, left the country late Tuesday bound for exile in France.

Largo, also known as Isaza, gained hero status for freeing a kidnapped Colombian lawmaker, Oscar Tulio Lizcano, 62, whom he dragged to freedom in October, earning a 400,000-dollar reward.

The 28-year-old was accompanied to Paris by another former FARC hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, and his girlfriend, who deserted from the rebels three months earlier.

Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate, who was freed by the military in July after eight years as a FARC hostage, proposed the exile to Largo, as a message to other rebels still holding hostages.