Paris - Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay have all been tagged by the OECD as countries not complying with international guidelines designed to stop countries from acting as tax havens.

The list hopes to build momentum on pledges made at Thursday's G20 summit in London, where world leaders again proclaimed the need to crack down on tax havens, countries where banking secrecy allows people to hide income from their nation's tax authorities.

Paris  - French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said on Wednesday that their two countries were preparing a proposal for a new world governance to prevent future economic crises caused by a lack of regulation.

"We want (at least) a minimum of regulation in the face of the disaster that has been caused by total deregulation," Sarkozy told journalists in Paris after a meeting with Lula just hours before the two were to travel on to London for the G20 summit.

Paris - One day before the opening of the G20 summit in London, France and China have put an end to their bilateral tension over Tibet, the French foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

"France and China reiterate their attachment to the principle of non-interference as laid down by the United Nations Charter, and agree to reinforce their collaboration on issues of fundamental interest to the two countries," the ministry said in a press statement.

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 - 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.