A French court Wednesday convicted a young woman for wearing a full-face Islamic veil in public and threw out her bid to have the country's controversial burqa ban declared unconstitutional.

Cassandra Belin, 20, was also convicted for insulting and threatening three police officers at the time of her arrest, which sparked two days of rioting in the town of Trappes, near Paris, in July, 2013.

Ministers from the "Friends of Syria" grouping are to meet in Paris Sunday with leaders of the mainstream opposition to President Bashar Assad ahead of peace talks due later this month.

A French diplomatic source said the foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will be present, among others, as will Ahmad Jarba, head of Syria's mainstream opposition National Coalition.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Tuesday there is currently no need to send reinforcements to Central Africa, where it has 1,600 deployed troops to help defuse sectarian violence.

"Given the current state of things, there are no particular reasons to send reinforcements" to Bangui, Le Drian said while visiting an airbase in southern France.

France's Pasteur Institut said Tuesday a new type of bacteria had been found in nutrient bags used by a hospital in the Alps to feed babies intravenously and thought to be responsible for three deaths.

The findings came after the parents of the three newborns, who died on separate days in early December, filed criminal complaints for manslaughter against the hospital in the town of Chambery in southeast France.

An Indian judge has ordered a French consular official to stand trial over accusations he raped his three-year-old daughter.

The order on Monday came after the accused, Pascal Mazurier, asked the court to discharge him for lack of evidence over allegations he raped his daughter in the case, which has dragged on for two-and-a-half-years.

Some 80 shells left over from the Second World War have been uncovered on a beach in northwestern France pounded by strong waves during a storm, police said Tuesday.

Bomb disposal experts were sweeping the beach in Locmariaquer, a small town in Brittany, where a security cordon had been put up around the area where the shells were gathered, after a walker stumbled across them on Monday.

Japan's foreign minister left for Spain and France on Tuesday, where he was expected to press Tokyo's case in its spat with China.

In a message on his ministry's Facebook page, Fumio Kishida noted the visits were his first of the new year.

Nicolas Bons, a young convert to Islam from a comfortable middle class French background, has died fighting in Syria barely four months after his half-brother met the same fate, their father said Monday.

In a story that has provoked bewilderment, the mother of 30-year-old Nicolas was informed by text message from the frontline that her son had been "martyred" on December 22 in a suicide truck bombing in the Syrian province of Homs, the father, Gerard Bons, told Agence France Presse by phone from his home in French Guiana.

France's government said Saturday it has recalled a batch of nutrient bags used by a hospital in the Alps to feed babies intravenously after three infants died because of a bacterial contamination.

The parents of the three newborns, who died on different days in early December, have filed criminal complaints for manslaughter against the hospital, located in the town of Chambery in southeast France.

One person died and 15 were injured after a cyclone packing winds of 150 kilometers (95 miles) an hour brushed by the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, officials said Friday.

A red alert asking residents to remain indoors was lifted on Friday.