France's health minister says tests on three suspected cases of a deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS are negative — but a fourth needs complementary tests and a fifth suspected case has been discovered.

Marisol Touraine said test results of the two remaining suspicious cases — people who had close contact with France's only confirmed case — should be known later Saturday.

A lawyer for the notorious Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal is in Caracas seeking President Nicolas Maduro's backing in an appeal against his client's conviction starting Monday in Paris.

Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was found guilty in France two years ago of a series of bombings that killed 11 people and wounded around 150 others between 1982-1983.

French President Francois Hollande said Friday that elections scheduled in troubled Mali for July must be held nationwide, as instability in the north and a refugee crisis have raised doubts this will be possible.

"We must make sure that Malian civil administration can be put in place everywhere for the organisation of these elections. And France, through its military presence and other armies, will contribute to this," he said during a press conference in Paris.

Lebanon has a reputation as the most liberal country in the conservative Middle East, but even a night on the town for gays can end in arrest and humiliating sexuality "tests".

They might be less persecuted than elsewhere in the region, but outside a few areas of the capital Beirut, Lebanese homosexuals are largely stigmatized and discriminated against.

France's health ministry on Wednesday reported the country's first case of a SARS-like virus that has killed 18 people so far, mostly in Saudi Arabia.

An unidentified person who came back to France from a trip to the United Arab Emirates was diagnosed with the deadly novel coronavirus, the ministry said.

President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that France was taking seriously a call by al-Qaida's north African wing for Muslims worldwide to launch attacks against the country's interests over its military operation in Mali.

An AQIM leader called on Muslims to "attack French interests everywhere" in a video message posted online.

A decision by the European Commission to give France two more years to meet its deficit target of three percent will not come "for free", EU President Herman Van Rompuy said on Tuesday.

"The decision is not (formally) taken, neither by the commission nor by the council," he told reporters at a press conference in Stockholm.

France said Tuesday it had arrested six members of ETA, as authorities continue to hunt down those who belong to the Basque separatist group over a year after it ended all armed activity.

The arrests come after a suspected top commander of ETA -- considered a terrorist group by the European Union and United States -- got a life sentence in April for the 2007 murder of two Spanish police officers in France.

Under fire from right and left, French President Francois Hollande on Monday spent the first anniversary of his election triumph hunkered down with ministers to thrash out a comeback strategy.

Hollande, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and most of the embattled Socialist government's ministers held talks at the Elysee Palace to set the administration's reform agenda for the coming months.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called Monday for "a political solution" to the conflict in Syria, after its regime was suspected of using chemical weapons and after two Israeli raids on the country.

Israeli raids on Sunday hit three military sites outside Damascus, the second such reported attack in 48 hours, reportedly targeting weapons bound for Lebanon's Hizbullah which is an ally of President Bashar Assad's regime.