Cairo - France is to provide a 280-million-dollar loan to finance the construction of the second phase of the third metro line in Cairo, Egyptian officials said Tuesday.

The agreement came during a two-visit by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon to Egypt that ended Tuesday. The loan will be given to French companies involved in the metro project.

Fillon said France would also give Egypt 3 million euros (4.2 million dollars) over three years support development projects.

Sydney  - A French sailor, crippled by a broken leg in a solo round-the-world yacht race, has been rescued off the coast of Western Australia, news reports said on Sunday.

Yann Elies, 34, was taken off his 18-metre yacht Generali in the Indian Ocean by crew of the Australian Navy frigate HMAS Arunta on Saturday night.

The ship's executive officer, Lieutenant-commander Simon Howard, said Elies was in stable condition aboard the frigate which was returning to Fremantle, ABC radio reported.

Strasbourg/Vienna - The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) said Friday that corruption was common in Austria and legal measures against it were still in the early stages, according to a spokesman and a report presented in Strasbourg.

In the construction business, in political life and in public administration, such practices were common occurrences, said a spokesman for GRECO, which was founded by the Council of Europe.

Although Austria had initiated some anti-corruption measures, "overall, the country is still at an early stage of the fight against corruption," the report said.

Paris - The best strategy to make peace in the Mideast is to encourage the rapid economic development of the Palestinian people, former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published Friday in the French daily Le Figaro.

Asked if he agreed with the withdrawal of Israel from most of the West Bank, the leader of the hardline Likud party said, "The method that consists in withdrawing from territories without concessions has only led to bringing Islamist movements linked to Iran, the Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas into Gaza."

Paris - The French economy is currently in the first of three consecutive quarters of negative growth, the government's statistical office Insee said on Friday.

French GDP for the fourth quarter of 2008 is expected to fall by 0.8 per cent, followed by a drop of 0.4 per cent in the first quarter of next year, Insee said.

The French economy is then expected to shrink by only 0.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2009 as the government's economic stimulus package begins to take effect and the recession gradually ends.

According to Insee, French unemployment will climb to 8 per cent by the middle of next year as some 170,000 jobs are lost.

Paris - The French government is preparing to deploy reinforcements to Afghanistan to comply with the wishes of US president-elect Barack Obama to carry out a military "surge" there, the online edition of the daily Liberation reported on Thursday.

The new deployment is likely to consist of several hundred soldiers and will eventually form part of a "French brigade" that will be stationed near the valley of Kapissa, the daily reported.