A Lithuanian military plane collided midair with a French NATO jet Tuesday and crashed after its two pilots ejected, officials in both countries said.

The French Mirage fighter landed safely after the collision with the Lithuanian L-39 Albatros combat training aircraft near the Zokniai air base in northern Lithuania. The Lithuanian pilots ejected and were taken to a hospital for medical checkups, officials said.

Sales of new homes plunged by 22.6 percent in France during the second quarter compared to the same period last year, the housing ministry said Tuesday.

Construction starts rose by 9.1 percent to 80,524 however, and the issue of construction permits climbed by 8.6 percent to 118,747.

UEFA President Michel Platini is warning of "red lights flashing" across Europe because of football's financial problems.

Platini confessed on Friday to fearing for the future of professional football because of clubs going bankrupt and running up debts, and players going on strike in Spain and Italy.

Italy and France are not engaged in a colonial-style battle to seize Libya's riches, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in an interview with Rai radio.

"There's not a race to arrive first in Libya," Frattini said, rejecting allegations in Italian newspapers of a competition between the two countries for the best contracts in a post-Gadhafi Libya.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday the Syrian people "have the right to democracy too" following a meeting with a leader of the Libyan rebel movement that toppled Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

"Syrians have the right to democracy too, and they are not condemned to being suppressed by a regime that does not understand we are living in a new century," Sarkozy said, while nevertheless ruling out military intervention.

Britain and France said Wednesday they were seeking a new United Nations resolution to unlock frozen Libyan assets in a bid to deliver urgently needed funds to the rebels.

As rebel forces battled to cement their victory a day after overrunning the Tripoli compound of strongman Moammar Gadhafi, officials in Britain and France said they were seeking a new resolution at the U.N. to release the blocked assets.

France welcomed the apparent defeat of Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Tripoli on Monday and said it would host a summit of the international "contact group" coordinating a response to the conflict.

"We have reached the tipping point. This is a subject of great satisfaction. France took risks, calculated risks, but the cause was just," Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters at his ministry in Paris.

World stocks swung between gains and losses Monday, as hopes the Federal Reserve might take action to keep the U.S. from slipping back into recession offset fears of a global slowdown.

Brent crude fell to near $106 a barrel as Libyan rebels captured most of Tripoli, boosting hopes the OPEC nation's oil exports could resume soon. The dollar was stronger against the yen but weaker against the euro.

A warning made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier in the month that Paris would consider pulling its troops from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon if it comes under attack again, is not the first, an official told An Nahar daily Saturday.

In a letter sent to his Lebanese counterpart President Michel Suleiman and PM Najib Miqati, Sarkozy said: “If the July 26, 2011 attack takes place again then France would wonder whether there is any reason to keep its troops to confront the dangers that the host country is not dealing with appropriately.”

France threw its support on Friday behind a call from the United Nations human rights chief for the International Criminal Court to investigate the violence in Syria.

On Thursday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told members of the Security Council that there was "reliable corroborative evidence" that Syrian forces are deliberately shooting anti-regime demonstrators.