It struggled for years to sell its Rafale jets abroad but French defense group Dassault has finally scored several lucrative deals, thanks in part to anti-U.S. suspicion in the Middle East, experts say.

Egypt was the first buyer, ordering 24 planes in February. India followed suit with 36 fighter jets in early April.

Four months after jihadist attacks in Paris killed 17 people, French MPs are set to approve a controversial bill giving spies sweeping new surveillance powers deemed "heavily intrusive" by critics.

The draft law, which is expected to sail through a vote in the lower house National Assembly on Tuesday, has sparked a firestorm of protest from rights groups, which claim it infringes on privacy.

France's far-right National Front chief Marine Le Pen said Sunday her father should "no longer be able to speak in the name of" the party, as a bitter public feud between the two deepens.

Jean-Marie Le Pen infuriated his daughter last month by reiterating his long-held view that the Nazi gas chambers were merely a "detail of history," as well as making other controversial remarks defending the "white world."

Mustaqbal Movement leader and ex-Prime Minister Saad Hariri is expected to meet with French President Francois Hollande in Saudi Arabia.

The meeting will be held in Riyadh on the sidelines of Hollande's visit to Riyadh to attend the Gulf Cooperation summit on Tuesday, the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat reported on Sunday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel had learned of "concrete threats" of terror attacks against Jewish or Israeli targets in Tunisia.

The Tunisian government quickly denied the claims, saying no such threats existed.

A U.S. judge Friday ordered BNP Paribas to pay a record $8.9 billion fine to settle violations of U.S. sanctions linked to Iran and other countries.

Judge Lorna Schofield finalized a sentence that also included a five-year probation and the imposition of a monitor at France's largest bank.

Flimsy tents and filthy corrugated iron huts dot the landscape at M'Poko, the refugee camp at Bangui airport where French troops allegedly raped hungry children in exchange for food.

Many children in the desolate camp -- home to more than 100,000 during the bloodiest days of the crisis in the the Central African Republic last year -- were orphans, forced to fend for themselves for food and water.

Bare-chested Femen activists making Nazi salutes disrupted a speech by France's far-right leader Marine Le Pen for five minutes at her National Front (FN) party's traditional May 1 rally in Paris on Friday.

Two others members of the militant feminist group had earlier tried to stop Le Pen laying a wreath at a statue of Joan of Arc in the French capital but were unceremoniously bundled away by the party's security guards.

Faced with mounting pressure to shed light on accusations that French soldiers sexually abused children in the Central African Republic, the United Nations said Friday suggestions of a cover-up were "offensive."

Revelations this week that an internal U.N. report was leaked last July to French authorities with allegations that French peacekeepers in the chaos-ridden country had sexually assaulted hungry children in exchange for food have sparked uproar.

French authorities have charged eight people over their alleged role in a Europe-wide horsemeat trafficking ring dismantled last weekend, a judicial source said Thursday.

The suspects were charged in the southern port city of Marseille, said the source, who wished to remain anonymous and gave no details as to their nationality.