Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy convinced Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin not to attack the Georgian capital Tbilisi and overthrow Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili this summer, the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur reported on Thursday.

Citing Sarkozy's foreign policy advisor, Jean-David Levitte, the magazine said that the incident occurred at the Kremlin on August 12, when Sarkozy - as president of the European Union - was trying to negotiate an end to the Russia-Georgia conflict.

Paris - The United States and the nations of the euro zone have entered an economic recession that will be long and could be severe, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a preliminary forecast released Thursday in Paris.

"Economic activity is expected to fall by 0.9 per cent in the US next year, by 0.5 per cent in the euro area and by 0.1 per cent in Japan as OECD countries enter a protracted slowdown," the OECD said.

Paris - Segolene Royal, the defeated Socialist Party candidate in last year's French presidential election, said Wednesday that she wanted to replace her former partner as party chief.

Asked if she would be a candidate for party leader, she told TF 1 television, "I will tell you frankly: it's true that I want to (head the party)."

The Socialist Party will elect a successor to the current party secretary Francois Hollande on November 20, following the party congress, which is due to begin Friday in the city of Reims.

Paris - Seven people were injured, two of them seriously, when an explosion ripped through the dormitory room of a student at a university in the southern French city of Montpellier early Wednesday, French media reported.

The victims were identified as students from eastern Europe. France-Info radio reported that one of them, a native of Russia, was in a coma and in grave condition.

Madrid  - French police Wednesday detained two suspected members of the militant Basque separatist group ETA, Spanish police sources said.

The two were captured during a routine police check as they were cycling near Tarascon-sur-Ariege in the south of the country. They were armed with a pistol and a revolver.

The suspects had documents related to ETA in their bags, the sources said. They also carried fake identity documents.

Madrid - French police Wednesday detained two suspected members of the militant Basque se