Hostage takings, vandalism and attempted assault sound like charges on a rap sheet for a hardened criminal. But they're the collective crimes of people who've been laid off recently.

Workers in the French factories for 3M and Sony — enraged about the size of severance packages for laid-off workers — held their bosses captive last month. The captured CEOs actually ended up bargaining with the kidnappers, while the police — not wanting to incense the workers even more — promptly responded by doing ...nothing.

Just last week, workers at a Caterpillar plant in France held their bosses captive as well. They, too, were looking for better treatment for laid-off coworkers. In another incident, workers at the French luxury retail company PPR surrounded their CEO's car and blocked roads so he couldn't escape. This time police did intervene and escorted François-Henri Pinault to safety.

Across the Channel in the United Kingdom, people are outraged with the multimillion dollar pension package given to former Royal Bank of Scotland CEO Fred Goodwin. One group was so upset that it vandalized Sir Goodwin's house and car.

An ominous e-mail from the vandals threatened more attacks:

We are angry that rich people, like him, are paying themselves a huge amount of money, and living in luxury, while ordinary people are made unemployed, destitute and homeless. This is a crime. Bank bosses should be jailed. This is just the beginning.

Joining in the spirit of protest, as many as 5,000 protesters gathering in London's financial district on the first day of the G-20 summit, expressing discontent over the financial crisis, climate change and war. Several demonstrators threw projectiles and forced their way into an RBS branch through broken windows.

Bert Klandermans, a professor of applied social psychology at Amsterdam's Free University, offers a psychological explanation for why some people are expressing their frustration in this way.

Anger is an emotion that spurs collective action ... [It's] an emotion that results from feeling that somebody is responsible for something, and could have acted differently ... [For many] the bankers did it wrong, and they did it wrong because they were greedy. That's what makes people angry.

Frustrated by executive compensation and the economy, protesters broke windows of an RBS branch in London. Photo: Camus Live Art (flickr)

Istanbul, Turkey. Photo: shioshvilli

Officials attending the World Water Forum in Turkey this week issued a statement that essentially said there's not enough water to waste.

That much was clear to one Canadian reporter attending the conference, who found that her press pass wasn’t enough to get her access to bathrooms with running water — reserved only for VIPs.

But it was less clear to two protesters from a California group, who were hosed by local police with water cannons — presumably the most “cost effective” way to respond.

But the water in those cannons is especially precious to Turkish residents, who are running out of water, according to Al Jazeera.

Turkey has experienced periods of extreme drought in recent years, and multinational companies have a stronghold on increasingly scarce water resources. Most locals drink bottled water, but that’s not a luxury everyone in Turkey can afford.

During the conference, Turkish engineers demonstrated against large firms that they say benefit cities by exploiting rural resources. Their view is that water talks need to focus on conservation, not privatization.

"We believe our drinking water should be managed so we don't need to buy it in bottles and it's freely available," lawmaker Ufuk Aras told Al Jazeera. "We were not born on this earth to help companies add to their profits."

Throughout the past 40 days, South Koreans have vehemently opposed a government proposal to lift a five-year suspension on the import of U.S. beef. Fear of meat tainted with mad cow disease prompted 100,000 Koreans to take to the streets of Seoul. Korea suspended the imports in 2003 when the first case of mad cow was discovered in American beef.

The public outcry over the proposal to lift the ban is President Lee Myung Bak's first big challenge as he tries to improve relations between the U.S. and South Korea. Though the president and his administration took office in February, already the uproar has prompted the president’s entire cabinet to offer their resignations. The divisive trade deal and a trucker’s strike over the surging price of fuel could further slow the South Korean economy.

This Al Jazeera video shows some of the more striking images from the demonstrations and gives an overview of the political climate that has led to the near- daily protests.

U.N. and World Bank officials say "the perfect storm" of factors has led to skyrocketing food prices, leading to riots in places in Haiti.

Haitians took to the streets this week, with The Times Online reporting that protesters compared their hunger pangs to the burn of battery acid. U.N. Peacekeepers used rubber bullets in attempt to control the situation.

The riots in Haiti are not the first uprisings over food prices, which have risen 65 percent in the last six years. There have been riots in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, and Senegal. A survey by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute says staple foods have risen by 80 percent since 2005. The price of rice is at its highest in the last 19 years and wheat is at a 28-year high.

“There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50 to 60 percent of income goes to food,” FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told The Times Online. “This is due to higher demand from countries like India and China, where GDP grows at 8-10 percent and the increase in income is going to food.”