Rising food and fuel costs pushed up French inflation to 3.2% in January, its highest level in more than a decade, official figures have shown.
The rate was up from December's figure of 2.8%, and was the highest level the EU harmonised inflation measure has hit since it was introduced.
The inflation figure could be awkward for the European Central Bank (ECB).
The ECB is expected to cut interest rates this year to encourage growth, but rising inflation could stop this.
The French inflation figures showed food prices rose 1.4% in January from December, and were up 4.2% compared with a year before. Energy prices were up 12.3% in January from the year before.
Fragile balance
At its last meeting, the ECB kept its key interest rate unchanged at 4% for the eighth month in a row.
The expectation has been that eurozone rates will be cut this year to shore up confidence in the region's fragile economic recovery, but with inflation stubbornly high in the biggest economies, some analysts believe that a downward move will be delayed.
"(For the ECB) inflation concerns are still right at the forefront," said Dominic White, economist at ABN Amro.
He noted that concerns about growth have become more pronounced over the past few months.
"Given where inflation is right now and the prospect that it can remain fairly animated throughout much of 2008, it's far too soon to be talking about the ECB leaning towards a bias for cutting rates," he said.
French inflation up on food costs
China Concerned of U.S. Spy Satellite Shot
China said it was concerned about U.S. military plans to shoot down a damaged spy satellite that is hurtling toward Earth with 450 kilograms (1,000 pounds) of toxic fuel.
The U.S. military has said it hopes to smash the satellite as soon as next week - just before it enters Earth's atmosphere - with a single missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the northern Pacific Ocean.
The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao Sunday as saying the Chinese government was monitoring the situation and has urged the U.S. to avoid causing damages to security in outer space and in other countries.
"Relevant departments of China are closely watching the situation and working out preventive measures," Liu said. Xinhua did not elaborate.
Russia also has voiced worries about the U.S. plan to shoot down the damaged satellite, saying it may be a veiled test of America's missile defense system.
The U.S. has insisted the plan to shoot down the satellite is not a test of a program to kill other nations' orbiting communications and intelligence capabilities.
The Bush administration and U.S. military officials have said the bus-sized satellite is carrying a fuel called hydrazine that could injure or even kill people who are near it when it hits the ground.
U.S. diplomats around the world were instructed to inform other nations that the operation is meant to protect people from the satellite's blazing descent and the toxic fuel it is carrying. The diplomats also were told to distinguish the U.S. operation from China's much criticized test last year, when it used a missile to destroy a defunct weather satellite.
Left alone, the satellite would likely hit Earth during the first week of March. About half of the 2,268-kilogram (5,000-pound) spacecraft would be expected to survive the fall and would scatter debris over several hundred kilometers (miles).
Known by its military designation US 193, the satellite carrying a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor was launched in December 2006. It lost power and its central computer failed almost immediately afterward.
Satellite Shoot Down: How It Will Work
The U.S. Navy could shoot down an errant spy satellite as early as Wednesday night. Now a new computer model shows what might happen.
The spy satellite USA-193, also known as NROL-21, was launched aboard a Delta II rocket on Dec. 14, 2006 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Shortly after the satellite reached orbit, ground controllers lost contact with it. Though the satellite's objective is secret, many believe it is probably a high-resolution radar satellite intended to produce images for the National Reconnaissance Office.
On Feb. 14, senior U.S. government officials at a Pentagon press briefing described a Defense Department plan to try and shoot down the defunct satellite, after becoming convinced that the spacecraft's toxic hydrazine fuel posed an unacceptable risk to people on the ground. The attempted strike could come Wednesday evening.
With this press information, computer modelers Bob Hall and Tim Carrico at Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI) put together a computer-generated simulation of the missile-satellite collision. The model shows a hypothetical deployment of U.S Navy ships in the Northern Pacific Ocean and the firing of a Standard Missile 3 at the failed satellite.
Information the modelers do know:
* The satellite has a mass of about 5,015 pounds (2,275 kilograms).
* The missile would be fired from a ship in the North Pacific Ocean.
* The interception would occur at an altitude of about 149 miles (240 kilometers).
* The satellite and missile would close on one another at a velocity of about 22,783 mph (36,667 kph).
If left alone, the satellite is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere some time between the end of February and early March. About 2,500 pounds (1,134 kilograms) of satellite material would survive re-entry (the rest would burn up), including 1,000 pounds (453 kilograms) of hydrazine, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Defense.
The collision between the fired missile and the satellite would not only break the massive hunk of metal into pieces but would also speed up its tumble through Earth's atmosphere.
"If you want to bring something down, you slow it down. You apply a force on it which results in it being slowed down and decrease in its orbit," Carrico told SPACE.com. "Right at that point where they want to engage [the satellite] is at the edge of the atmosphere, so you're bringing it down faster."
The plan comes on the heels of the intentional destruction last year of China's Fengyun-1C weather satellite, which produced a flurry of concern over the hostile-or-not nature of the firing as well as a serious load of shrapnel littering Earth orbit. That debris is still in space, frustrating mission managers and satellite operators forced to dodge the potentially debilitating bits.
USA-193 is already on its way toward Earth and the interception will take place at a much lower altitude than that of the China satellite, presumably meaning that whatever happens, there will not be a fresh load of small junk sent into perpetual orbit.
If more details were made public, the model results could change depending on several factors, including the location of the ships and when the missile is fired.
"How the missile hits the satellite will affect how quickly the debris re-enters and what the velocity is between the objects and how they hit," Hall said. "Are they attempting to get most of the debris to come down in the Pacific almost immediately? Or ... over the course of two or three revolutions, is most of it going to start to fall out? If we had different information about the engagement we could re-run our model.
