About 60 Syrian refugees, of whom 40 are on a hunger strike, have occupied a key point in the northern French port of Calais and vowed to stay put until they are sent to Britain.

On the second day of the protest and hunger strike on Thursday, the asylum seekers put up slogans scribbled on cardboard proclaiming: "Take us to the UK", and "We want to talk to David Cameron".

French business activity expanded in September to a 20-month high in September, according to final survey data released on Thursday, an indication that recovery may be picking up steam.

Markit said its composite Purchasing Managers Index for France came in at 50.5 percent, above the 50 point level that indicates growth.

Officers with France's DCRI domestic intelligence agency on Tuesday arrested a Paris woman suspected of links to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

A source close to the investigation said the woman was arrested around 6:30 am (04:30 GMT) at her apartment in the working-class Belleville district of Paris.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday launched a new bid to have corruption charges linked to the financing of his 2007 election campaign dismissed on procedural grounds.

Sarkozy and former budget minister Eric Woerth have both appealed to the Court of Cassation, France's highest court for civil and criminal matters, to overturn a September 24 ruling by a lower court that key medical evidence in the case was admissible.

Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation Monday into the assets of Syrian President Bashar Assad's uncle, whom anti-corruption groups accuse of illegally obtaining a vast fortune and property empire.

A judicial source told Agence France Presse the investigation had been opened into Rifaat Assad, the brother of Bashar Assad's father Hafez, after a criminal complaint filed on September 13.

A Paris court Monday sentenced eight members of an Islamist militant group to prison, giving the Indian-born mastermind Mohamed Niaz Abdul Raseed eight years.

The group was accused of recruiting French citizens for training at militant camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

President Francois Hollande came under mounting pressure to rein in his squabbling ministers on Monday as a row over the treatment of France's Roma population rumbled on.

Against a background of opposition claims that the Socialist-Green coalition is in disarray, Hollande side-stepped the controversy triggered by Interior Minister Manuel Valls's claim that most Roma in France will never integrate and should be sent back to their countries of origin.

France has awarded the U.S. writer Philip Roth its highest decoration, the Legion d'honneur (Legion of Honor), with the country's foreign minister bestowing the award in New York.

At a ceremony on Friday, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, in the Big Apple for the United Nations General Assembly, praised Roth's prolific career as one of the leading men of American letters.

Nigerian Islamist group Ansaru on Friday released a video of a French national kidnapped in December, the SITE jihadi tracking website said.

In the video posted online, 63-year-old Francis Collomp, who was kidnapped in northern Nigeria on December 19, reads a statement with an unidentified person holding a weapon in the background.

France said Friday it will fine Google up to 300,000 euros ($402,180) for breaking rules on data privacy.

The French agency that regulates information technology says Google Inc. hadn't satisfactorily responded to its June decision giving the company three months to be more upfront about the data it collects from users.