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French industrialist Louis Gallois called for a patriotic effort to reverse declining competitiveness through shock therapy as he handed in a review on Monday which the Socialist government commissioned and is now under pressure to heed.

France’s new 75 percent income tax on the rich may not be popular with millionaires. But it’s being cheered by another group: Paris real-estate buyers. Real estate agents say that the number of multimillion-dollar real-estate listings in Paris has jumped more than 25 percent over last year – due in part to the threat of the new income tax. More than 400 new listings have come onto the luxury real-estate market over the past six months, they say.

French prosecutors say they are dropping an investigation into former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn over a "gang rape" alleged to have taken place in Washington. The woman who made the complaint has retracted her evidence, they added. Mr Strauss-Kahn, 63, is still under investigation with three other men over their alleged roles in a prostitution ring. He denies the allegations.

President Francois Hollande's Socialist government unveiled sharp tax hikes on business and the rich on Friday in a 2013 budget aimed at showing France has the fiscal rigour to remain at the core of the euro zone.

In a victory for Britain's royal family, a French court Tuesday ordered that published photos of Kate Middleton sunbathing topless be handed over to her and her husband, Prince William, within 24 hours.

The new tax is expected to be formally announced in the government's first budget on 28 September, but that does not mean there is a sense of panic in France. This new tax will only hit very rich individuals and only for a year or two, to help bring down the government deficit.

The royal family is dealing with yet another nude photo controversy, but one of a very different sort. Closer, a French gossip magazine, has published topless photos of Kate Middleton , formally Duchess Catherine of Cambridge, sunbathing on the terrace of a private home in the south of France where she and husband Prince William, formally the Duke of Cambridge, vacationed.

French President Francois Hollande has set himself a deadline to turn around the economy by the end of 2014, but having hamstrung the effort with tax rises to meet deficit targets, economists doubt his growth goals will ever fly.

Prosecutors have opened a murder inquiry into the 2004 death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a judicial official tells the Sipa news agency.

French police were preparing for another night of violence Tuesday after clashes struck the northern city of Amiens overnight, with rioters torching cars and a nursery school in a resurgence of urban unrest that has periodically roiled the country.