The French presidency announced that President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who met on Thursday, share "the same desire to see a credible government" in Lebanon to bring it out of its acute crisis, media reports said Friday.

French President Emmanuel Macron will make a prime-time television address on Wednesday evening as the country awaits the government's decision on new measures to halt the spread of the coronavirus, his office said.

France will intensify its efforts to help "decapitate" Qaeda-linked groups operating in the Sahel of western Africa, President Emmanuel Macron told leaders in the region via video conference on Tuesday.

France and five allies gather on Monday to discuss the Sahel's jihadist insurgency, with Paris looking for support enabling it to cut French troop numbers in the strife-torn region.

A Belgian court convicted an Iranian diplomat Thursday for plotting a thwarted 2018 bombing of an opposition rally outside Paris and ordered him jailed for 20 years.

A French lab will start producing Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine in March, while another  will begin making the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech in April, Industry Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said Wednesday.

French police were holding a man under arrest on Tuesday after discovering a severed head in a box that had been thrown out of a window in the centre of the southern port city of Toulon.

The French government on Monday called on Myanmar's military leaders to respect the result of last November's election, after Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian leaders were arrested in a coup.

The French economy plunged into a deep recession last year as the coronavirus pandemic slashed total output by 8.3 percent, official figures showed Friday.

Amnesty International on Thursday urged Paris to halt weapons sales to Lebanon, saying French-manufactured rubber bullets, tear gas grenades and launchers had been used to quell peaceful demonstrations.

"France has for years been supplying Lebanese security forces with law enforcement equipment that they then used to commit or facilitate serious human rights violations," the group said in a statement.