France's first lady Valerie Trierweiler began a tour of Mali on Thursday with a visit to Gao, one of several northern cities liberated by a French-led military operation against an Islamist occupation.

President Francois Hollande's partner, on a 48-hour trip as "part of a mission for children and women", highlighted the role of female soldiers in securing the north for the former French colony as part of Operation Serval.

An al-Qaida-linked cell broken up in Egypt at the weekend planned to bomb the U.S. and French embassies in Cairo, state news agency MENA quoted investigators as saying on Wednesday.

"The accused planned suicide car bombings outside the embassies of France and the United States in Egypt," MENA said

International donors pledged a much more than expected 3.2 billion euros in aid Wednesday to help Mali avoid the mistakes which allowed Islamist rebels to seize vast swathes of the troubled country.

The meeting, co-hosted by the European Union and France, Mali's former colonial ruler, had an initial target of two billion euros ($2.6 billion) to cover about half the cost of a 2013-14 economic and political reconstruction program agreed in cooperation with the international community.

France fell into recession in the first quarter of this year with the economy shrinking by 0.2 percent, official figures showed Wednesday, in further bad news for President Francois Hollande's embattled Socialist government.

The data from the official INSEE statistics agency came exactly a year after Hollande's inauguration, with the president already struggling to tackle a 16-year high in unemployment and record-low approval ratings.

Carlos the Jackal, once considered one of the world's most wanted terrorists, returned to court in Paris on Monday to appeal his conviction for a series of deadly bombings in France 30 years ago.

The trial kicked off with Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, appearing without his defense lawyers and saying he had asked them not to attend.

The French government is considering creating a new tax on smartphones and tablets in a bid to raise millions to support the creation of digital cultural content inside France.

The proposal, handed to President Francois Hollande Monday, outlines a 1 percent tax on the sale of Internet-compatible devices, targeting companies such as Google, Apple and Amazon. The tax would yield about 86 million euros per year. The revenue would help cultural industries create French content such as music, images and videos.

Failed Socialist presidential contender Segolene Royal said Monday that French President Francois Hollande had moved too slowly on reforms and there was a feeling of "lost time" with the government.

Royal, who is also Hollande's ex-partner and has four children with the president, told newspaper Le Monde that his first year in office was marked by a lack of action.

France's health minister says tests on three suspected cases of a deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS are negative — but a fourth needs complementary tests and a fifth suspected case has been discovered.

Marisol Touraine said test results of the two remaining suspicious cases — people who had close contact with France's only confirmed case — should be known later Saturday.

A lawyer for the notorious Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal is in Caracas seeking President Nicolas Maduro's backing in an appeal against his client's conviction starting Monday in Paris.

Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was found guilty in France two years ago of a series of bombings that killed 11 people and wounded around 150 others between 1982-1983.

French President Francois Hollande said Friday that elections scheduled in troubled Mali for July must be held nationwide, as instability in the north and a refugee crisis have raised doubts this will be possible.

"We must make sure that Malian civil administration can be put in place everywhere for the organisation of these elections. And France, through its military presence and other armies, will contribute to this," he said during a press conference in Paris.