Paris  - Daniel Bouton, chairman of the French bank Societe Generale, was to quit following criticism over risky investments and massive losses, the Le Figaro newspaper said Wednesday.

Bouton said he handed in his resignation "to protect the bank," the paper reported. "I have become the target of incessant attacks that finally damage the company that I am very attached to," he said.

The bank's director general, Frederic Oudea, was to take over Bouton's position on May 6. Bouton stressed he would not receive any severance pay.

Paris - Launch of the Herschel telescope, the most powerful infrared telescope ever flown into space, has been rescheduled for May 14, the European Space Agency
(ESA) said Tuesday. The launch had originally been set for April 16 but was postponed when an anomaly was discovered during tests of a sub-assembly identical to the one on the Ariane 5 launch rocket that is to put the Herschel telescope and the Planck microwave observatory into orbit.

Paris - The virus currently circulating in Mexico and the United States and which has killed at least 20 people is not swine flu, the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Monday. "The virus has not been isolated in animals to date. Therefore, it is not justified to name this disease swine flu," the OIE said in a press statement.

Paris - About four out of five people who visit the Louvre Museum in Paris come expressly to see Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the head of the museum, Henri Loyrette, was quoted Monday as saying. "It's true that 80 per cent of our daily visitors come to see the Mona Lisa. (The Louvre) is the only museum in the world to have an icon like that," Loyrette said in an interview published in the daily Le Parisien.

He said that the economic crisis was also affecting the Louvre, with 10 to 20 per cent fewer American visitors to the museum.

Cryolor, French industrial gas tanks manufacturer and a 100 per cent subsidiary of Cryolor SA, has decided to set up a manufacturing facility near Chennai.

The plant would be setup at Melmaruvattur in Chennai, covering a built up area of 15,000 sq. m.

The company intends to pump an investment worth Rs 45 crore on the plant through its fully owned subsidiary Cryolor Asia Pacific.

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday the government had drawn up a plan that earmarks 1.3 billion euros (1.7 billion dollars) to aid jobless under the age of 26.

In a speech in the town of Jouy-le-Moutier, north of Paris, Sarkozy said his plan would lead to the recruitment of 320,000 apprentices by June 2010.