Paris - Workers at a French factory of the US industrial equipment manufacturer Caterpillar have taken hostage four of its senior managers after the company announced that the site would be shut down, Europe 1 radio reported on Wednesday.

Among the four individuals being held by some 50 workers at the site in the city of Grenoble is the head of Caterpillar-France, Nicolas Polutnik. If the factory is shut, 773 employees will be made redundant.

Paris  - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday it was essential that this week's G20 summit in London take concrete steps to sanction uncooperative tax havens.

"It is unacceptable and incomprehensible if concrete regulations cannot be applied in the coming days or weeks" to offshore tax havens that do not share information about their accounts, Sarkozy told Europe 1 radio.

Strasbourg  - Police and around 150 anti-NATO campaigners clashed overnight on the outskirts of the French city of Strasbourg after police initiated identification checks in the run-up to the upcoming NATO summit, protesters reported Wednesday.

Police were said to have used tear gas and other anti-riot devices against the group who had gathered to protest stricter controls of identification. The situation was returned to calm around 1100 pm (2100 GMT) Tuesday night.

The city prefecture could not confirm the incident.

Paris - The economies of the world's industrial nations will contract by an average of 4.3 per cent in 2009, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Tuesday in Paris.

In addition, unemployment rates in many OECD member countries will surpass 10 per cent by the end of 2010, the OECD said in its Economic Outlook Interim Report.

Paris  - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to walk out of this week's summit of G20 nations in London if it does not look to be achieving concrete results, the daily Le Figaro reported on Tuesday.

"If there is no progress in London, there will be an empty chair. I will get up and leave," Sarkozy said in an aside during a recent meeting of his cabinet.

The newly appointed deputy head of Sarkozy's office, Xavier Musca, on Monday underlined France's insistence that irreversible decisions be taken at the summit.

Paris - French composer and three-time Oscar winner Maurice Jarre died at 84 after a battle with cancer, French media reported Monday.

Jarre died Sunday in Los Angeles, the reports said, citing Jarre's management.

The Lyon-born composer considered a pioneer of modern film scoring wrote the music for more than 150 films and was nominated nine times for Academy Awards, winning three for 1962's Lawrence of Arabia, 1965's Doctor Zhivago and 1984's A Passage to India.

He worked with some of the world's greatest directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, David Lean, John Frankenheimer and Luchino Visconti.