A unit of Veolia Environnement plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce in France, or 1,500 jobs, unions said Wednesday. Unions said that during a meeting that Veolia Water's management indicated it would try to make the cuts without resort to forced redundancies. Veolia Water employs 15,000 people in France. Veolia Environnement, which also provides waste, energy and heating services, has been carrying out since 2011 a programme to reduce its high debt by making savings and selling off assets. cbn/ln/rl

A 49-year-old jobless man set himself on fire in Paris on Friday, just two days after another man died following a similar incident to protest his exclusion from unemployment benefits, officials said. The man sprayed himself with inflammable liquid and then stepped on some clothes he had set alight in front of his home in the northern district of Saint-Ouen, the local municipal office said. But passers-by called emergency services and the man was taken to hospital with first- and second-degree burns.