Paris - The French government will look to charge workers at a factory belonging to Germany's Continental tyre group who trashed a police station to protest the closing of the site, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Wednesday.

"What happened is unacceptable violence ... We are going to prosecute," Fillon told France Inter radio, but said that the government was also actively looking to find a buyer for the factory, which employs 1,120 people.

Paris - French car maker PSA Peugeot Citroen said Wednesday that turnover for the first quarter of 2009 had fallen by 24.9 per cent, to 10.973 billion euros (14.2 billion dollars).

Every segment of the group's business was hit by the economic crisis, with sales in its automobile division down 23 per cent, at 8.68 billion euros.

In addition, turnover of the group's auto equipment supplier Faurecia plunged by 38 per cent, to 2 billion euros.

Paris - UNESCO, the US Library of Congress and 32 partner institutions around the world launched Tuesday the World Digital Library, the first cultural website of its kind.

The site includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings and prints and photographs from libraries and archives around the world.

Paris - With schools and politicians on Easter holiday, the big news in France these days is what President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly told a group of lawmakers about several Western leaders, as reported by the left-leaning daily Liberation.

Most of the controversy concerns the president's assessment of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero as "not very clever."

Paris - Four people were hurt and more than 200 were taken into custody when a protest demonstration by ethnic Tamils in Paris turned violent, France Info radio reported Tuesday.

More than 500 Tamils had gathered late Monday near the Gare du Nord railway station to call attention to the deaths of nearly 1,500 Tamils, including hundreds of children, during a recent offensive by Sri Lankan government troops against Tamil rebels.

Paris - France will remain at the UN racism conference in Geneva and plans to sign its concluding declaration, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Tuesday.

"Yesterday (Monday) we all left the hall together," Kouchner told Europe 1 radio, referring to the walkout of European ambassadors in reaction to comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about Israel. "But we are not leaving the conference."