French President Francois Hollande reshuffled his cabinet Thursday, naming Jean-Marc Ayrault foreign minister and adding several ecologists to government as he seeks to widen his political base ahead of a presidential poll in 2017.

Ayrault, a 66-year-old former prime minister, will become France's top diplomat after veteran politician Laurent Fabius bowed out of politics to take up a post at the Constitutional Council.

Veteran French politician Laurent Fabius bowed out of government Wednesday after a career spanning more than three decades that saw an early string of scandals but ended with his shepherding a complex climate deal as foreign minister.

Fabius holds the distinction of being France's youngest ever prime minister, a post he took up at 37, and has remained a Socialist heavyweight, ending his career in the ornate hallways of the Quai d'Orsay as his country's top diplomat.

French President Francois Hollande is expected to set in motion Wednesday a government reshuffle aimed at boosting his appeal to voters ahead of a bid for a second term in 2017.

Veteran foreign minister and former premier Laurent Fabius is likely to step aside as Hollande seeks fresh political momentum with just 15 months left in office.

A French general has testified for the first time in a probe into the role of French forces during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, sources close to the case said Sunday.

General Jean-Claude Lafourcade was questioned in particular over claims that France's U.N.-mandated Operation Turquoise, which he led, left ethnic Tutsis to be slaughtered by Hutu killers in the western Bisesero hills in June 1994, the sources said.

The huge flow of migrants and refugees to Europe via Turkey must be slowed, the interior ministers of France and Germany said Friday after inspecting registration facilities in Greece.

The goal "cannot just be to register arriving refugees and to relocate them equitably (but above all) to reduce the flow," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said at the close of the two-day visit.

France on Wednesday banned protests in the refugee hotspot of Calais ahead of a planned march by anti-Islamic organization Pegida.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he had asked local authorities in the northern French port to prevent all demonstrations "regardless of the organizers".

The front window of a Muslim butchery was sprayed with bullets during the night on the French island of Corsica, where communal tensions have flared in recent months, local prosecutor Eric Bouillard said Wednesday.

The butchery, in the center of the resort town of Propriano, was "hit with a torrent of heavy-weapons fire," said Bouillard. No one was injured.

Thousands of people marched through Paris on Saturday to decry the proposed extension of a state of emergency imposed after the November Paris attacks.

Braving driving rain and shouting slogans including "state of emergency -- police state" the marchers protested loudly against a measure they see as curbing human rights.

Cuba's Communist President Raul Castro will be welcomed under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris during a rare state visit Monday to showcase his island's warming ties with big world powers.

The Cuban leader arrived in Paris on Saturday, two days ahead of the start of the official program, sources at Orly airport south of Paris said.

Thomas Fabius, son of French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, has been charged with forgery in connection with his passion for gambling, judicial sources said Saturday. 

He was also named as a "temoin assiste" -- an intermediary status between that of a witness and someone who has been charged -- in connection with fraud, tax laundering, breach of trust and misuse of corporate assets, with the information confirmed by a source close to the case.