French President Nicolas Sarkozy visits Hungary on Friday, his first trip in preparation for France's presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2008.

France will deploy 200 more troops in Afghanistan, the French defense minister said Friday after his meeting with the president of Tajikistan, an ex-Soviet republic bordering on Afghanistan.

The Socialist Party of France will struggle for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey. The Genocide recognition must become the main precondition for Turkey’s accession to the European Union, head of the French Socialist Party Delegation, the Party’s First Secretary Francois Hollande said.

A compelling new study from the September issue of the Journal of Modern History reviews historical evidence, including documents and gravesites, suggesting that homosexual civil unions may have existed six centuries ago in France.

France's oil giant Total SA is likely to buy a 35 percent stake in a Vietnamese offshore oil block as Vietnam tries to halt a slump in crude production.

Officials in French Polynesia say a small passenger plane crashed shortly after taking off from the island of Moorea Thursday, killing at least 14 people.

France and Libya have agreed to their first arms deal since the European Union lifted an arms embargo on Libya in 2004. The deal comes after the release last week of six medical workers who Libya accused of intentionally infecting Libyan children with the AIDS virus. As Anita Elash reports for VOA from Paris, French opposition parties say they want proof that the arms sale was not part of a release package.

Brunei will begin drilling a new oil well this week in collaboration with France's Total SA, officials said, marking a fresh effort to bolster the tiny sultanate's oil and gas reserves.

A preliminary deal by President Nicolas Sarkozy to provide civilian nuclear technology to Libya was criticized by environmentalists and French leftists. Sarkozy announced the deal - a first step toward selling Libya a nuclear-powered plant to desalinate sea water - during a visit to the North African country on Wednesday.

Neither France nor the EU paid money for the release of five nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to life in Libya on charges of contaminating children with the AIDS virus, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said.

The wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy is in Libya Monday for a second time to negotiate the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to life in prison for allegedly contaminating children with AIDS. Libya`s top court last week commuted the death sentences against six to life imprisonment.

Settling in a sunny area in the South of France is a dream that many do, are they from the North or from another country. Who, after a couple weeks of holidays spent on the seaside or in a small typical village of the South of France, has never thought of buying a house. The cicadas singing, no more good bread, olive oil, cheese and wine bought at the village morning market… the South of France appears as a paradise both for Northern people and for foreigners.