French luxury brands from Chanel to Vuitton on Wednesday launch a campaign with several European countries to fight back against the increasingly lucrative and damaging flood of counterfeit goods.

The global market for luxury fakes has exploded, fed by Asia where 85 percent of articles seized in Europe are produced and the increasing popularity of on-line shops that give the buyer a sense of anonymity and impunity.

French President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday that the use of armed force could be possible in Syria following the Houla massacre, but that it had to be carried out under U.N. auspices.

"An armed intervention is not excluded on the condition that it is carried out with respect to international law, meaning after deliberation by the United Nations Security Council," Hollande said in a television interview.

Major Western powers said Tuesday they would expel Syria's diplomatic envoys in protest at the weekend massacre in the town of Houla, in which more than 100 people were killed.

The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain as well as Canada, Australia, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Switzerland and Belgium announced decisions to expel ambassadors or top envoys.

French smokers have formed a lobby to "defend their rights" against what they perceive as unfair curbs imposed by the state, the group's leaders said Sunday.

The Union for the Rights of Adult Smokers (UDFA) says it represents a potential 12.5 million voters and intends to fight against the spread of no-smoking zones or rising cigarette prices.

France condemns the "massacre" by Syrian forces which reportedly killed more than 90 people in the town of Houla and calls for greater international action, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Saturday.

"I am making immediate arrangements for a Friends of Syria group meeting in Paris," Fabius said in a statement in the wake of Friday's attacks on the town in a new violation of a ceasefire.

President Francois Hollande said Friday that France would coordinate with NATO allies the withdrawal of its combat troops from Afghanistan.

The French head of state said the pullout would take place with "good understanding with our allies" particularly U.S. President Barack Obama, during a visit to a military base in Kapisa, where most French troops are stationed in Afghanistan.

A Frenchwoman who caused a security scare on a U.S.-bound flight after she claimed to have been fitted with some kind of device will be sent home without charge, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

After investigations, no criminal complaint will be filed against Lucie Zeeko Marigot, a French citizen and a native of Cameroon, who caused her flight from Paris to North Carolina to be diverted to Maine, the Department of Justice said.

A French woman forced a transatlantic flight from Paris to North Carolina to be diverted to Maine on Tuesday after claiming she had a "surgically implanted device."

The U.S. Airways jet with 179 passengers and crew on board landed safely in Bangor, Maine, where the woman was taken into custody by the FBI before the Boeing 767 continued its journey to Charlotte, North Carolina.

New French President Francois Hollande has vowed to try to repair damaged ties with Ankara, at a first meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Turkish media reported on Tuesday.

"Let us re-establish relations between Turkey and France, fix what has been damaged," Turkish President Abdullah Gul quoted Hollande as telling him at a meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Chicago.

World powers and Iran hope to lay the groundwork for an end to the long-running crisis over Tehran's nuclear program in talks in Baghdad on Wednesday, but the challenges are immense.

The meeting with the P5+1 -- the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany -- comes at a time of unprecedented tensions more than three years since Barack Obama became U.S. president promising a new dawn in relations.