Mideast rivals Israel and Syria on Tuesday each announced ambitions to develop nuclear energy, with Israel facing the prospect that its plan could bring new attention to its secretive nuclear activities.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday urged developing countries to embrace nuclear energy and rich lenders to help pay for it, but stood firmly against countries that "cheat" and use the technology to make weapons.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged euro 3 million ($4 million) in emergency aid Monday after hurricane-force winds triggered extensive floods that killed at least 59 people in western Europe. Nearly a dozen others were still missing.

The leader of the armed Basque group ETA was arrested in France on Sunday, officials said, in another setback for the separatists, who have seen five of their commanders taken into custody in the last two years.

France's national anthem blared across the tarmac on Wednesday as Nicolas Sarkozy made the first visit ever by a French president to Haiti, once his nation's richest colony - offering aid to a country prostrate after a catastrophic earthquake.

President Nicolas Sarkozy is bringing a French plan to rebuild Haiti with him on Wednesday's visit to the Caribbean country, a trip officials hope will usher in a new era between France and its former colony.

Russia joined the US and France in urging Iran to stop enriching uranium to higher levels in a statement shared on Wednesday with The Associated Press, suggesting the project reinforced suspicions that Tehran is seeking to make nuclear weapons.

The Taliban released a video of two French journalists kidnapped in Afghanistan in December pleading for their government to negotiate with their captors.

France has agreed to sell Russia an advanced amphibious warship and is considering a Russian request for three more, French defense officials said on Monday. It would be the first major arms deal between Russia and a NATO member.

French authorities have denied citizenship to a man who forced his French wife to wear a face-covering veil, saying he had rejected national values of secularism and gender equality.

Ten years after an Air France Concorde crashed, killing 113 people and foreshadowing the end of the jet that embodied elegance at supersonic speed, a French court on Tuesday begins probing an elusive question: Who was to blame?Ten years after an Air France Concorde crashed, killing 113 people and foreshadowing the end of the jet that embodied elegance at supersonic speed, a French court on Tuesday begins probing an elusive question: Who was to blame?

A parliamentary panel that wants Muslim women to stop veiling their faces recommended on Tuesday that France ban such garb in public facilities, including hospitals and mass transit, and refuse residence cards and citizenship to anyone with visible signs of a "radical religious practice."

A Paris court has ruled that Google Inc.'s expansion into digital books breaks France's copyright laws, and a judge slapped the Internet search leader with a €10,000-a-day fine until it stops showing literary snippets.

France will not be a seeded team at Friday's World Cup draw, setting up potential clashes with powerful teams like Brazil or Spain in the group stage.

Football's world ruling body FIFA on Friday officially turned down a request from the Irish football authorities to stage a replay of their controversial World Cup playoff defeat to France.

The prospect of a World Cup without Cristiano Ronaldo and Thierry Henry will move a step closer if Portugal and France come unstuck in the first leg of their World Cup play-offs on Saturday.

As terrorism spreads its wings across the globe and threatens stability in Asia, France has favoured a combination of actions to fight the "horrible scourge" and emphasised on close cooperation between its intelligence agencies and their Indian counterparts.

Seeking to reinforce bilateral ties, Angela Merkel visited to Paris for a meeting with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, hours after she was sworn for a second time as German chancellor.

French judges fined the Church of Scientology almost a million dollars on Tuesday for defrauding vulnerable followers, but stopped short of banning the group from operating in France.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's 23-year-old son Jean, at the centre of a bitter nepotism row, has dropped his bid for a top public job saying he has been the victim of a campaign of "manipulation."

Six people taken hostage on Wednesday in an armed robbery on a supermarket north of Paris have been released unharmed and two suspects detained, the store management and an AFP photographer said.

Nuclear talks between Iran and world powers were held up on Tuesday as Tehran said it did not want France to be part of any deal on uranium enrichment.

President Nicolas Sarkozy lamented on Tuesday that his son had been "thrown to the wolves" after the 23-year-old's imminent appointment to manage France's top business district whipped up a storm.

French magistrates charged a nuclear scientist suspected of al Qaida links with "membership of a terrorist group" on Monday, judicial officials said.

Somali pirates in two skiffs fired on a French navy vessel early on Wednesday after apparently mistaking it for a commercial boat, the French military said. The French ship gave chase and captured five suspected pirates.