The IMF forecast Tuesday that France, the eurozone's second-largest economy, will fall into recession this year with the economy contracting by 0.1 percent.

In its latest revisions, the International Monetary Fund dropped its previous forecast of 0.3 percent growth this year, but still expects the French economy to rebound by 0.9 percent in 2014.

Syria on Wednesday told France to "stop interfering" in the country's internal affairs, a day after Paris criticized an amnesty decree issued by President Bashar Assad.

"President Assad's decree was issued on the eve of Syria's independence day from France's occupation," state news agency SANA said, citing a foreign ministry statement.

A 38-year-old Frenchman well-known in radical Islamist circles in Belgium was killed Sunday while fighting for an Islamist brigade in Syria, Belgian media said.

Raphael Gendron left for Syria several months ago to fight with the 'Falcons of Sham' headed by Abdelrahman Ayachi who was wounded Sunday and who is the son of Syrian-born radical Imam Bassam Ayachi, the SudPresse newspaper group said in a report on its website.

French President Francois Hollande will make a state visit to China next week, Beijing said Monday, his first to the world's number two economy.

The trip also represents the first by a leader of a major Western power since China installed its new President Xi Jinping last month.

France will launch one its biggest-ever trials on Wednesday as five managers from company PIP face charges of selling faulty breast implants that sparked a global health scare.

More than 5,000 women have registered as plaintiffs in the case, which sees the defendants including 73-year-old PIP founder Jean-Claude Mas charged with aggravated fraud for using industrial-grade silicone in implants.

French ministers will for the first time on Monday disclose their assets, in a move President Francois Hollande's Socialist government hopes will restore public confidence after a tax fraud scandal.

There was apprehension, however, that the move could backfire by revealing significant riches to a country struggling with a lengthy economic downturn.

French photographer Pierre Borghi returned to France on Sunday, a week after he was freed in Afghanistan following four months in captivity, officials said.

Borghi, 29, arrived at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on a flight from Delhi, an Agence France Presse journalist said.

France strongly condemned on Friday the Syrian shelling of the outskirts of the Bekaa town of Arsal.

The French Foreign Ministry considered the development a “dangerous violation of Lebanon's sovereignty.”

France is marking the 70th anniversary of the world-loved "The Little Prince" with a host of special editions, including a new biography of its author, native son Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

"Le Petit Prince", a series of parables in which a boy prince recounts his adventures among the stars to a downed pilot on Earth, was first published in New York in 1943, in English and French.

France's Grand Rabbi -- the country's leading Jewish religious figure -- on Thursday resigned with immediate effect, after admitting to plagiarism in his books.

Gilles Bernheim last week acknowledged the unattributed copying and later acknowledged that a claim on his CV that he was awarded a prestigious philosophy academic status was not true.