Imperial Tobacco on Tuesday announced the closure of factories in Britain and France with the loss of 900 jobs, citing declining sales in Europe, tougher anti-smoking measures and the growth of contraband sales.

The two factories concerned are at Carquefou, near Nantes in western France, where 327 people are employed, and  Nottingham in central England, which has 540 staff.

President Francois Hollande of France and Barack Obama of the U.S. share the same "concern" over the violence witnessed in east Ukraine over the past few days, the French presidency said in a statement Monday.

The two leaders voiced their worry in a telephone conversation in which Hollande expressed hope that a Geneva meeting on Thursday between representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the United States and Europe "will start a dialogue" to defuse the situation.

The United States and France are eager for Lebanon stage the presidential elections on time, reported the Kuwaiti daily al-Anba on Sunday.

Informed sources told the daily that the two sides are keen that the elections are held within the constitutional deadline, adding that they will not voice their preference to any candidate.

A woman dubbed the "Black Widow" of the French Alps goes on trial Monday for the murder of her husband, a case with troubling echoes of how four of her previous partners were poisoned, two of them fatally.

Manuela Gonzalez, 53, is accused of the 2008 murder of Daniel Cano, a 58-year-old metal worker whose charred remains were found in the back of his burnt-out car near the house he shared with her in Villard-Bonnot in the Isere region of the Alps.

Popular approval for French President Francois Hollande has hit a new low of 18 percent, far below the 58 percent for his new Prime Minister Manuel Valls, an opinion poll showed Sunday.

The least popular French president for decades, Hollande's poll rating fell five points, dipping below 20 percent for the first time since coming to power in 2012.

France's massive Algerian community turned out Saturday to vote in a presidential election widely expected to be won by ailing Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who is running for a fourth term.

Voting opened early Saturday for the some 815,000 ex-pat Algerians, France's largest immigrant group, who are eligible to vote in the elections.

The leader of France's far-right National Front voiced her support for the federalization of Ukraine during a visit to Moscow Saturday, Russian news agencies reported.

Marine Le Pen, who is also a European Parliament lawmaker, told the speaker of Russia's lower house Sergei Naryshkin she backed Moscow's call for Ukraine to devolve greater powers to its regions.

France's former first lady Carla Bruni declared herself "crazy about Israel" and talked about Jewish family ties in an interview published by an Israeli daily on Friday.

Ahead of a May 25 concert in Tel Aviv, the singer, guitarist and former model told the Hebrew-language Yediot Aharonot that she hoped to bring both her husband, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, and her son Aurelien with her.

French billionaire industrialist and senator Serge Dassault has been charged with vote buying in his former fiefdom east of Paris, a judicial source told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Dassault, 89, was questioned for two days in February in connection with allegations that he operated an extensive system of vote buying that influenced the outcome of elections in Corbeil-Essonnes, where he was mayor from 1995 to 2009.

A priest in an ultra-conservative Catholic sect has been charged with rape and torture for acts allegedly committed during exorcisms involving three schoolteachers.

Versailles prosecutor Vincent Lesclous told AFP the 40-year-old priest with the Society of Saint Pius X, whose identity has not been released to protect the victims, was charged on Wednesday and is being held without bail.