Paris - Faced with a weakening automobile market and rising costs for raw materials and transport, French auto maker Renault said Thursday it would cut jobs to reduce overhead costs by 10 per cent.

The move was to be based primarily on what the company said would be "voluntary departures," most of them in Europe. The announcement was made as Renault announced excellent first-half profits and sales results.

Renault provided no details about how many jobs would be cut, but French radio station RTL reported Thursday that it involved some 7,000 employees, most of them in France.

The station also said that Renault head Carlos Ghosn had discussed the step with French President Nicolas Sarkozy late Wednesday.

Paris - French auto maker PSA Peugeot Citroen said Wednesday it had earned net profits of 733 million euros (1.16 billion dollars) in the first half of 2008, up by a hefty 49 per cent over the same

Dublin - French President Nicolas Sarkozy was due in Dublin Monday to discuss Ireland's rejection of the European Union's Lisbon Treaty with Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen, amid controversy sparked by his remarks that Ireland would have to hold a second referendum. 

Sarkozy, who is acting head of the EU as France currently holds the EU presidency, told members of his Union for a Popular Movement Party (UMP) Tuesday that "the Irish must vote again." 

Voters in Ireland rejected the treaty to streamline the EU in a referendum June 12. 

Paris, July 19 : The XMM-Newton, which is the ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) orbiting X-ray observatory has discovered an exploding star in the Milky Way, which was missed by the legions of star w

Paris, July 18 : Scientists and engineers are preparing ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Mars Express for several close fly-bys of the Martian moon Phobos, which would include some of the most detai

Paris, July 18 : Spacecraft controllers have started executing a series of manoeuvres to gradually bring Venus Express closer to its host planet, which would enable it to observe unexplored regions and investigate phenomena that were not within its reach before.

The operational manoeuvres to bring the spacecraft closer will be executed through the month of July, settling it into its new orbit by 4 August.

Until now, Venus Express has occupied a highly eccentric polar orbit: at its closest point (pericentre), the spacecraft is between 250 km and 400 km from the planet, and at its farthest (apocentre), it is about 66,000 km away.

The pericentre is located at 84 degrees north.