French group Dassault Aviation is poised to sign a 6.3-billion-euro ($7-billion) deal with Qatar for 36 of its Rafale fighter jets, the presidency said Thursday, in the third foreign order this year.

Having struggled for years to sell any of its Rafale jets abroad, Dassault has recently scored several lucrative, high-profile contracts with Egypt, India, and now Qatar.

French prosecutors have opened an investigation into claims that French peacekeepers sexually abused children as young as nine in the Central African Republic, a judicial source said Wednesday. 

The move followed claims reported in Britain's The Guardian newspaper that a senior U.N. aid worker had been suspended for leaking an internal report into abuse by French soldiers against children at a center for internally displaced people in the capital Bangui.

President Francois Hollande announced Wednesday that France would increase its defence budget by close to four billion euros over four years, in response to extremist threats after the Paris jihadist attacks.

He also said that military patrols at sensitive sites nationwide that were set up after the January attacks would be made permanent, with a 7,000-strong force dedicated to internal security.

A special U.N. panel on Tuesday condemned the "trivialization" of hate speech in France, as it launched a two-day review of racial discrimination in the country.

"We see that the principle of equality is not completely reflected ... above all due to intolerance and racism," said Ion Diaconu, the president of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi held talks on Tuesday with French President Francois Hollande in Paris.

The patriarch left the 50-minute meeting at the Elysee Palace without making a statement, reported the National News Agency.

The uncle of Syrian President Bashar Assad is under investigation in France for amassing a 90-million-euro fortune, including a stud farm and luxury apartments, despite being kicked out of Syria "with nothing" 30 years ago. 

French investigators have provided details to Agence France Presse of their year-long probe into the finances of Rifaat al-Assad, the younger brother of late dictator Hafez al-Assad. 

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi condemned on Sunday lawmakers' ongoing failure to elect a new president, warning of the collapse of the Lebanese state.

He said during his Sunday sermon from Our Lady of Lebanon church in the French capital Paris: “There are no justifications for the failure to elect a president.”

Nine men have been charged with drug trafficking after the British coastguard seized more than two tons of cocaine off the east coast of Scotland, French and British officials said on Sunday.

French customs shared "specific information allowing two ships from the Royal Navy and the British coastguards to board a tug 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Scotland carrying a very large quantity of cocaine, more than two tons" on Thursday, it said in a statement.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday lashed out at the European Union and world leaders who have recognized the 1915 massacres of Armenians as genocide on the centenary of the events. 

Erdogan accused the leaders of France, Germany and Russia of "supporting claims based on Armenian lies" after they described the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide -- which Turkey strongly objects to. 

President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on French leader Francois Hollande to restore ties after a year of tensions over Ukraine as the two leaders met on the sidelines of genocide commemorations in Armenia.

"Unfortunately, our ties are not in the best shape, trade turnover is falling including with France which only causes regret," Putin told Hollande in the Armenian capital Yerevan.