The anti-IS coalition will meet in Paris Tuesday after a series of shock battlefield gains by the jihadists, with Iraq under pressure to step up its fight by being more inclusive of the Sunni minority.

The main focus of the meeting will be the crisis in Iraq, where the Islamic State group seized the city of Ramadi two weeks ago in the biggest blow to the U.S.-led coalition since it began bombarding jihadist positions in August.

India will only buy 36 Rafale fighter jets as they are "way too expensive," the defense minister said Sunday, dashing lingering French hopes of a larger deal that has been years in the making.

Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said the previous government's plans to buy 126 of the fighter jets from French firm Dassault were "economically unviable and not required."

Based in Mali's inhospitable northern desert, French troops are waging an attritional campaign against a ghost-like, invisible enemy -- a master in the guerrilla art of hit-and-run.

More than two years after the French-led Operation Serval routed jihadists advancing on the capital Bamako, armed groups in the area are no longer able to carry out coordinated attacks.

A Frenchwoman who kept her boyfriend as a "domestic slave", forcing him to ingest sponges and window cleaner, was Thursday sentenced to three years in prison, half of which was suspended.

Zakia Medkour, 43, was also ordered to pay 200,000 euros ($217,000) in damages to her ex-boyfriend Maxime Gaget, 37, for crimes which the prosecution said went "beyond violence" with a "female torturer and a male victim."

Iran on Thursday warned global powers against making "excessive demands" in talks aimed at sealing a ground-breaking nuclear deal, after France demanded access to its military installations.

"I would expect my negotiating partners to refrain from making excessive demands," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said during a visit to Athens, adding: "People need to have their foot in reality, not in illusions."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said a British referendum on whether to leave the EU was "very risky", ahead of a visit by Prime Minister David Cameron to Paris on Thursday.

Cameron is carrying out a whistlestop tour of European capitals to push for reforms he says are necessary before the EU referendum, including on immigration.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday that France would oppose a nuclear deal with Iran if it did not allow inspections of military sites.

An agreement "will not be accepted by France if it is not clear that verifications can be made at all Iranian facilities, including military sites," Fabius told parliament.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and France's Francois Hollande will likely meet next week to finalize plans for a more integrated eurozone as the threat of a British exit from the EU looms, European sources said.

The Berlin meeting, which will also include European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, was "almost certain", the sources said, in a move that will cause tremors in a euroskeptic London suspicious of a two-speed Europe dividing euro and non-euro nations.

The leader of France's far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen, visited Moscow Tuesday for talks with the speaker of the lower house that were closed to press.

Le Pen previously met the speaker Sergei Naryshkin, Russia's fourth most important official and a member of the ruling United Russia party, in April last year.

An Air France passenger jet flying from Paris to New York was escorted by two U.S. fighter planes for the last stretch of the trip Monday because of a bomb threat against the flight, the airline and U.S. officials said.

Hours after it landed and was searched, the FBI said no bomb had been found and it declared the Airbus plane clear, CNN reported.