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French forces launch one of their biggest offensives against militants in northern Mali before the start of their troop withdrawal later this month.

Donors need to pour aid into Mali over the next six months to rebuild its strife-hit north and stop defeated militants taking advantage of the chaos to return, France's development minister said on Tuesday.

A major al-Qaeda base has been dismantled by French forces in the remote mountains of northern Mali, France's Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says.

French-backed Malian troops searched house-to-house in Gao and Timbuktu on Tuesday uncovering arms and explosives abandoned by Islamist fighters, and France said it would look to hand over longer-term security operations in Mali to an African force.

Within the past few days, French combat forces have deployed to the West African state of Mali to halt the advance of militant Islamist fighters toward the capital and to help the Malian army begin to reclaim towns previously occupied by the militants.

France pledged on Tuesday to keep troops in Mali until stability returned to the West African country, raising the specter of a long campaign against al Qaeda-linked rebels who held their ground despite a fifth day of air strikes.

The French president says the country will raise its domestic terror threat level after military action in Mali and Somalia, promising to increase protection at public buildings and transportation networks.

BlackBerry is reporting an outage affecting users in Europe, Middle East and Africa - interrupting service for customers on the very day Apple Inc. unveiled its hot new iPhone 5.

Scientists have found alarming levels of the lung disease tuberculosis in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America that are resistant to up to four powerful antibiotic drugs. In a large international study published in the Lancet medical journal on Thursday, researchers found rates of both multi drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) were higher than previously thought and were threatening global efforts to curb the spread of the disease.

A unique airplane has just completed a 4,000-mile journey, making the first solar-powered intercontinental round-trip air journey. Traveling between Europe and Africa, the Solar Impulse experimental solar airplane landed in Payerne, Switzerland at 8:30 p.m. local time (2:30 p.m. ET) on Tuesday. The odyssey began two months ago, on May 24. This wasn't a test to see how fast the plane could make the trip, but to assess its endurance and reliability.