An advisor to French President Francois Hollande was in Beirut on Friday for talks with top Lebanese officials on the $3 billion Saudi pledge to buy military equipment for Lebanon from France.

Emmanuel Bonne, who is Hollande's adviser on North Africa and the Middle East, arrived on a several day official visit. He will be joined in the next couple of days by Admiral Edouard Guillaud, the chief of the defense staff.

French actress Julie Gayet has initiated a privacy suit against Closer magazine over its report that she was having an affair with President Francois Hollande, the magazine said Thursday.

Gayet, 41, is seeking 50,000 euros in damages and 4,000 euros in legal costs from the magazine over a report she claims breached France's privacy legislation.

Concern over the well-being of Valerie Trierweiler mounted Thursday as the official partner of President Francois Hollande remained in hospital and it emerged that he had not visited her.

Trierweiler has spent almost a week in a Paris clinic being treated for stress. She was admitted last Friday just hours after it was revealed that her partner Hollande had been having an affair with actress Julie Gayet.

A truck dumped a huge pile of manure outside France's National Assembly on Thursday in a protest against the French political elite.

The driver of the truck -- which was marked with the slogan "Out with Hollande and the whole political class!" -- was apprehended by police shortly after releasing his smelly load outside the front gates of the grand Palais Bourbon that hosts the lower house Assembly.

Turkey's spy agency has denied it was involved in the killings of three female Kurdish rebels in Paris a year ago but has launched an internal probe into the case.

A Turkish national has been charged in France over the triple murder but the motive remains unknown. Turkey has suggested the killings were the result of an internal feud in the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) over the peace process.

Paris - Naharnet Exclusive Report

Officials concerned with Lebanese affairs in the French administration assured on Wednesday that the Saudi Arabian donation to the military institution has taken its first steps towards implementation.

France's culture minister on Wednesday blocked actress Julie Gayet from becoming a jury member of a prestigious French academy in Rome following revelations she was having an affair with President Francois Hollande.

Investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaine revealed that the 41-year-old had been nominated before Christmas as a member of the 2014 jury for a French academy at the sumptuous Villa Medici, which every year selects a group of French-speaking artists for a 12- to 18-month residency.

A drunken man has been arrested for trying to douse the eternal flame at the landmark Arc de Triomphe monument in Paris, police said Wednesday.

The man parked his car on Tuesday evening near the famed monument on the Champs Elysees, the city's emblematic avenue, and rushed towards the flame with a fire extinguisher in hand.

A Sri Lankan man wanted on an international arrest warrant for terrorism, was discovered in France by accident, after he walked into a police station to complain about poor working conditions.

Jeyanthan Tharmalingam, 35, went last Thursday to give a statement in a case about illegal employment in which he was a victim, at a police station in the eastern suburbs of Paris, judicial sources said.

French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that 700 people had left France to join the fighting in Syria in what he called a "worrying" trend.

"A certain number of young Frenchmen and young foreigners living in France... are fighting in Syria -- 700 are listed, that's a lot. Some are dead," Hollande told a press conference in Paris.