passenger plane crashed in heavy fog and burst into flames on a highway in north western Russia, killing 44 people

passenger plane crashed in heavy fog and burst into flames on a highway in north western Russia, killing 44 people, officials have said.


The Tupolev-134 aircraft, carrying 43 passengers and nine crew, crashed on its final approach to an airport in the city of Petrozavodsk.
The Emergencies Ministry said the RusAir plane came down on a highway around a mile short of the runway. It broke apart before bursting into flames.
Eight people including a 10-year-old boy are reported to have survived the crash and are in critical condition in hospital in Petrozavodsk.
There is no immediate explanation for the accident but the Interfax news agency quoted airport director Alexei Kuzmitsky as saying there were "unfavourable weather conditions".

This was compounding by the failure of the runway's high-intensity lighting, Alexei Morozov, deputy head of the Interstate Aviation Committee, told the ITAR-Tass news agency.
The jet was travelling from the Russian capital Moscow 400 miles away.
The Emergencies Ministry confirmed the incident on its website and posted a list of 43 passengers.

The plane was travelling from Moscow
The Karelia branch of the ministry said radio contact with the pilot was lost at 11:40pm local time (7:40pm GMT).
Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said that the crash appeared to be the result of "pilot error in bad weather" and the crew tried to spot the runway visually and simply landed in the wrong place.
It happened on the eve of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's planned appearance at the Paris Air Show to support dozens of Russian firms seeking sales contracts.
Russian air safety has improved in recent years, particularly operations of Western-built aircraft.
But the safety of Russian-built aircraft remains an issue, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Read More

Far from protecting Europe, a second bail-out of Greece is likely to cost eurozone taxpayers three times the amount of the original by 2014

The debate over the Big Fat Greek Rescue has oscillated wildly between will-they, won’t they and can they can’t they. But now it’s beginning to shift into: should they, shouldn’t they?
The aim of the international mission has always been pretty clear, even if the method hasn’t: Athens must be shored up to protect Greece, the European Union, the euro, the European banking system, and the wider global economy.
Behind the first domino of default, the international authorities have mustered extraordinary support, including the €110bn bail-out agreed last May, plus two vast temporary loan guarantee schemes. Next up is the proposal for a second bail-out, expected to be a further €120bn.
Surely, reckon Europe’s directors, this will be enough to buy a happy ending to even the gloomiest Greek tragedy? But what if the vast support is funding, not the end, but another even more dramatic - and expensive - act of the play?
This is the conclusion of a report by Open Europe, although there’s no entertaining prose here: “This is a debt crisis and someone will have to take losses,” says the London-based think tank. In fact, a second bail-out will wind up costing European taxpayers three times the amount in the end.

 

 

Read More

The entire 2011 census database has been stolen by hackers and will be published online, it has been claimed

Ryan Cleary, an alleged member of the hacking group behind the claim, LulzSec, was arrested in Essex this morning by specialist cyber crime officers from Scotland Yard.
The 19-year-old was taken to a central London police station and remains in custody on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act offences.
A “significant amount of material” was also seized from an address in Wickford, Essex.
The “pre-planned intelligence-led operation” in collaboration with the FBI followed claims online that the 2011 census database had been stolen and would be published in full.
“We have blissfully obtained records of every single citizen who gave their records to the security-illiterate UK government for the 2011 census,” a posting purportedly by LulzSec said.

 

Read More

Foreign secretary William Hague has dismissed Tony Blair's vision for an elected head of the European Union by insisting that member states have more pressing priorities

Foreign secretary William Hague has dismissed Tony Blair's vision for an elected head of the European Union by insisting that member states have more pressing priorities than further "constitutional tinkering".

Hague made clear his view after Blair argued that a directly elected president of Europe, representing almost 400m people from 27 countries, would give the EU clear leadership and enormous authority.

In an interview with the Times, Blair set out the agenda that he thought a directly elected EU president should pursue, although he conceded there was "no chance" of such a post being created "at the present time".

Asked about the former prime minister's call for further European integration and the creation of an elected president, Hague suggested that Blair may have been thinking of the role for himself.

"I can't think who he had in mind," Hague joked.

Speaking at a Lancaster House press conference following talks with his South African counterpart, Hague added: "Elected presidents are for countries. The EU is not a country and it's not going to become a country, in my view, now or ever in the future. It is a group of countries working together.

"So the appropriate solution is not an elected president for a group of countries, it's for those countries each to promote economic growth in their countries, to bring their deficits under control. They are the immediate priorities for Europe, rather than further constitutional tinkering or change."

Blair, speaking to the Times to mark the publication of the his autobiography, A Journey, in paperback, warned that Europe should be ready to unify to avoid losing out to the economic and military power of China and other booming economies, such as Brazil and India.

"We won't have the weight and influence a country like Britain needs unless we're part of that European power as well," Blair said. "Europe has got a fantastic opportunity, but only if it's prepared to reform and change radically in the way it works."

He said the process of holding an election would give Europeans a greater affinity with the EU and would also change citizens' beliefs that unity was only about sustaining peace in Europe.

Blair said: "For Europe, the crucial thing is to understand that the only way you will get support today is not on the basis of a sort of postwar view that the EU is necessary for peace. For my children's generation, that is just a bizarre argument.

"They don't see that as a real threat, that European nations will go to war with each other. But they can understand that in a world in which China is going to become the dominant power of the 21st century, it is sensible for Europe to combine together, to use its collective weight in order to achieve influence. And the rationale for Europe today, therefore, is about power, not peace."

He set out five areas in which the EU should become closer: tax policy and "the social model"; completion of the single market; and in forging a common energy policy; a common defence policy; and a common immigration and organised crime policy.

Read More

EUROPE needs an elected president with a democratic mandate to drive sweeping reforms and give the EU leadership standing on the world stage, Tony Blair says.

THE former British prime minister warned yesterday that the European Union risked losing out to the economic and military might of China, Brazil and India.

The popular consent enjoyed by a directly elected president of Europe -- chosen by an electorate of more than 386 million from 27 countries -- would give the EU clear leadership and enormous authority on the world stage, Mr Blair said. The post would represent a seismic development in the 50-year history of the EU and pave the way for sweeping economic reforms, including collaboration over tax policies.

"The rationale for Europe today is about power, not peace," Mr Blair told The Times of London in an interview to mark the publication of the paperback edition of his autobiography.



Mr Blair set out five areas where the EU should forge closer links to "make us more powerful as a unit": tax policy and fundamental reform of the social model; completion of the single market; forging a common energy policy; a common defence policy; and a common immigration and organised crime policy.

The former Labour leader also said the success of the Arab Spring was hanging in the balance and the West should prepare a massive and enduring economic support package akin to the European Marshall Plan of 1948 for states that embraced democracy. The Gaddafi regime was crumbling, but the allies faced a big task to rebuild Libya.

He said Labour leader Ed Miliband should embrace entrepreneurs and enterprise, be sceptical of the "Blue Labour" embrace of nostalgia and avoid the temptation to move the party to the Left.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, "seems a perfectly nice guy", but there was a question about the durability of the ruling coalition with Conservatives, Mr Blair said.

"The problem (for the Lib Dems) is that it's very hard to fight three elections to the Left of Labour and then end up in a Tory government."

Mr Blair conceded a directly elected EU president had "no chance of being accepted at the present time". But the British and Europeans needed to wake up to the growing economic powers of countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and China. "We won't have the weight and influence a country like Britain needs unless we're part of that European power as well," he said. "Europe has a fantastic opportunity, but only if it's prepared to reform and change radically."

Mr Blair's proposal would give a European president the largest electoral mandate in the world. At present, there is the President of the European Council, the Belgian Herman Van Rompuy, who was chosen by member governments of the EU. Mr Blair, ironically, was for a long time seen as a candidate for the position.

Mr Blair said voters had little love for the European Parliament, the one democratically elected EU body. Electing a president would give European citizens more of an affinity with the EU, he said.

"For Europe, the crucial thing is to understand that the only way that you will get support for Europe today is not on the basis of a sort of post-war view that the EU is necessary for peace.

"For my children's generation, that is just a bizarre argument. They don't see that as a real threat, that European nations will go to war with each other.

"But what they can understand completely is that in a world in particular in which China is going to become the dominant power of the 21st century, it is sensible for Europe to combine together, to use its collective weight in order to achieve influence.

"And the rationale for Europe today therefore is about power, not peace."

Read More

Romania and Bulgaria face new delays in their aspirations to join the European Union's borderless travel zone after EU governments asked on Thursday for more evidence of their anti-corruption efforts.

Romania and Bulgaria face new delays in their aspirations to join the European Union's borderless travel zone after EU governments asked on Thursday for more evidence of their anti-corruption efforts.

EU interior ministers said at a meeting in Luxembourg both newcomers had met technical requirements for having their borders with older members brought down.

But they agreed to wait until at least September before deciding whether to admit Romania and Bulgaria into the Schengen zone, named after a village in Luxembourg where a deal to cut border checks in Europe was signed in 1985.

"We hope that in September we can take this (Romania's and Bulgaria's Schengen accession) to another stage," Hungary's interior minister Sandor Pinter, who chaired the discussions, told a news conference.

Reluctance among EU governments to expand the borderless zone comes at a time when hostility towards immigrants in Europe is fanning a debate over the limits of unrestricted travel.

France and Italy have asked in recent months to change the bloc's rules to allow for temporary restoration of internal borders, citing concerns over an influx of illegal immigrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to flee violence in North Africa and the Middle East.

Some EU governments say corruption in Romania and Bulgaria also poses a security risk and want to see a European Commission report on improving their justice systems, due around mid-year, before deciding on admitting them.

"Some member states, for example Germany, have made it very clear that they would not support Schengen expansion if the report is negative," one EU diplomat said.

Romania and Bulgaria have struggled to convince their EU partners that judicial reforms are bearing fruit since they joined the bloc in 2007. Monitoring reports by the EU executive have regularly contained strong criticism of the countries, which had hoped to join Schengen in March 2011.

"It is too early to take a decision now, and it may take some time before we are in a position to do so," Dutch minister for asylum and immigration, Gerd Leers, said in Luxembourg.

"The Schengen system is based on mutual trust. We are asking new countries to effectively guard our collective borders."

The two countries, both on the Black Sea, lie on important routes for human trafficking and trading in illegal drugs and arms. They say they are doing what they can to combat abuse.

"I would be calmer if the Mediterranean border of Schengen was guarded so well as Bulgaria and Romania guard their Black Sea border," said a Bulgarian member of the European Parliament from the ruling centre-right GERB party, Andrei Kovachev.

Read More

new system of European governance

the overriding message from the European Commission that runs through its recommendations for each of the 27 member states in the new, post-crisis system of radically centralised oversight and correction of national economic policies by the EU known as the 'European Semester'.



"We are now implementing the new system of European governance," commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, heralding the unveiling of 27 detailed - or 'granular', to use the adjective EU officials use - national prescriptions, telling member states what they are getting right and wrong with their fiscal policies and what they must do to 'fix' their economies.

It goes further than fresh call for austerity: it is a recipe for much deeper liberalisation of the European economy than has yet been seen.

From intervening in collective bargaining to cut wages, to making it easier to fire workers, to a shift away from progressive taxation, through the new system, the EU hopes to utterly transform its member-state economies to be more competitive with the likes of the US, China and emerging economies.

Under the new, six-month system repeated annually, the commission in January sketches out a rough idea of what it expects national economic policies to look like for the coming period, a document that is then endorsed by the European Council, representing the member states.

All 27 states then submit their budgets and broader economic plans to the commission - before they are submitted to national parliaments - to see if they are sufficiently rigorous.

Then in June, in the current and penultimate step in the process, the commission gives its appraisal of these plans, setting out what must be corrected, a series of recommendations that must also win endorsement from the European Council.

Over the following 12-18 months, governments must put in place all the changes ordered by the Council-Commission duo.

If countries are in the eurozone, this oversight is backed up by the imposition of stiff fines for delinquent governments up to a maximum of 0.5 percent of GDP. For an economy the size of Spain, such a fine would amount to €5.25 billion.

In announcing its recommendations, sensitive to accusations of a power grab, the EU executive denied that it was replacing national parliaments: "This is not about dictating policy ... National governments retain responsibility for economic policies implemented in member states."

"But the impact of those policies no longer stops at national borders," it continued, laying out its argument as to why such unprecedented centralisation is necessary: "The commission is the only EU institution with the political autonomy, the technical expertise and the pan-European perspective to be able to oversee this process."

The commission did however acknowledge the anger regular Europeans feel at the austerity and liberalisation that has already been imposed in response to the crisis, but argues there is no alternative and that these changes should have been made years ago.

"There is discontent among citizens in several member states," the EU executive concedes in its main document giving an overview of the changes that it says need to be made.

"However, under the pressure of events, many of the changes needed to remedy structural weaknesses, which have often been delayed for years, are now being considered or implemented."

A mantra - whose wording changes subtly here and there, but whose essence is the same - is repeated through all the documents: "Fiscal room for manoeuvre is very limited."

"We know that achieving the goals we have collectively set ourselves means sometimes hard choices. But these efforts, if made seriously and by all, will allow Europe to leave the crisis behind it and safeguard our future prosperity."

Indeed, with just five centre-left governments remaining in the EU after a series of electoral debacles (two of which, in Spain and Greece, are on their last legs), the right, which also controls the three European institutions, feels increasingly confident that the growing number of strikes and protests are an unrepresentative irrelevance. Most citizens approve of the strategy of austerity, they believe.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Barroso, a conservative himself, crowed how in his native Portugal that parties that rejected austerity had been trounced in the recent general election.

'Insufficient ambition, vague, lacking focus'

Overall, the commission's conclusion is that the economic programmes submitted by the member states "broadly reflect" the priorities it outlined in January, but that some countries, according to Barroso: "show an insufficient level of ambition, and others are lacking in specificity."

"Many member states need to show more ambition when it comes to fiscal consolidation," he said. The commission also described many of the proposed measures as "vague, lacking sufficient focus."

The general semester recommendations for all states call for a review of wage-setting systems to ensure that wages keep in line with productivity in order not to undermine competitiveness. They also look to increasing the statutory retirement age across Europe and then automatically linking regular adjustments to this age to changes in life-expectancy. Early retirement should also be phased out.

Such efforts will not be easy to implement in many places. Efforts to increase the French retirement age last year provoked widespread strikes and blockades that paralysed much of the country as critics argued that such changes would hit blue-collar workers hardest and increase youth unemployment.

Governments should make it easier to hire and fire workers, the commission also recommends, although the language deployed is a more technocratic call to "rebalance employment protection."

"Urgent action" should be taken to ease the regulation of companies while payroll taxes should be reduced.

Brussels has also called for taxation in general to be shifted away from labour, where the higher the income, the higher the rate paid, and onto consumption, where everyone pays the same rate, regardless of income levels.

It is not all dour news however: the recommendations in many cases also call for efforts to reduce school drop-out rates, increase the participation of women in the workforce, boost support for vocational training and life-long learning, and achieve greater energy efficiency.

However, the reality is that almost all countries apart from Britain will have to significantly up their game.

The thread running through almost all the recommendations is that the masochism must continue.

Highlights

COUNTRIES UNDER EU-IMF TUTELAGE

NB. Five governments, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Portugal, and Romania, received only one recommendation: to follow through on the austerity and structural adjustment imposed in return for national bail-outs.

AUSTRIA

- Accelerate deficit reduction

- Consolidate the health-care sector

- Phase out early retirement

- Increase women's statutory retirement age

- Stricter conditions on invalid pensions

- Reduce labour taxation and social security contributions

- Further liberalise trades and professions

BELGIUM

- Increase effective retirement age

- More ambition in reducing deficit, further spending cuts

- Reform wage bargaining and wage indexation to match productivity gains

- Shift taxation from labour to VAT and green taxes

- Boost retail, energy sector competition

BULGARIA

- Speed up austerity

- Introduce 'debt brake'

- Speed up pension reform

- Keep older workers in employment longer

- Reform wage bargaining and wage indexation to match productivity gains

- Expand the temp agency market

- Abolish electricity and gas price controls

CYPRUS

- Use any extra revenues for faster debt and deficit reduction

- Strengthen supervision of banks and credit co-operatives

- Extend the years of pension contribution

- Increase water prices

- Link the statutory retirement age to life expectancy

- Reform wage bargaining and wage indexation to match productivity gains

CZECH REPUBLIC

- Further austerity in the event of 2011 revenue shortfalls

- Faster increase in the retirement age than planned

- Promote private pension savings

- Increase availability of part-time jobs

- Link university funding to performance reviews

DENMARK

- Speed up deficit reduction if economy improves

- Introduce debt brakes for local, regional and central government

- Phase out early retirement

- Reform disability pensions

- Review land-use legislation

- Liberalise municipal and regional public procurement

- Reform mortgage rules and property taxes

ESTONIA 

- Reduce taxation and social security contributions

FINLAND 

- Link the statutory retirement age to life expectancy

- Further liberalise the services sector, especially retail

- Use any windfall revenues to reduce the deficit faster

- Further measures to achieve cost savings in public sector

- Introduce structural changes to respond to an ageing population

FRANCE 

- Use any windfall revenues to accelerate debt and deficit reduction

- Further measures to reform the pensions system if needed

- Ease employment protections

- Limit minimum wage growth

- Shift taxation from labour to VAT and green taxes

- Further liberalise trades and professions and services and retail sectors

GERMANY 

- Restructure regional banks - the 'Landesbanken'

- Liberalise professional services and craft sector

- Extend debt brake to regional level

HUNGARY 

- Insufficient austerity

- Use any windfall revenues to reduce the deficit faster

- Ease regulation of business

- Expand the powers of the Fiscal Council, a body of economic experts independent of government that advises on budgets

- Lower labour taxation

ITALY 

- Speed up debt and deficit reduction

- Introduce 'debt brake'

- Reform employment protection

- Reform wage bargaining to match productivity gains

- Make it easier to dismiss employees

- Further liberalise services sector

LITHUANIA 

- Lower social assistance and eliminate "disincentives to work"

- Shift taxation toward energy use and increase energy taxation

- Liberalise "very strict labour regulations"

- Reform state enterprises "prone to inefficiencies"

- Speed up deficit reduction

- Introduce 'debt brake'

- Expand temp work sector

LUXEMBOURG

- Further reduce the deficit

- Discourage early retirement

- Link the statutory retirement age to life expectancy

- Reform wages setting system and link wages to productivity

MALTA

- Further austerity to prevent excessive 2011 deficit if necessary

- Introduce 'debt brake'

- Accelerate the increase in retirement age and link it to life expectancy

- Eliminate wage indexation

NETHERLANDS

- Increase the statutory retirement age and link it to life expectancy

- Raise the effective retirement age

- Prepare a blueprint for reform of long-term elderly care

- Introduce road tolls

POLAND

- Introduce 'debt brake'

- Eliminate early retirement for miners and armed forces

- Raise statutory retirement age for women

- Reform the farmers' social security fund to encourage them to leave the sector

- Streamline construction and zoning legislation

SLOVAKIA

- Introduce ‘debt brake' for central government and social security

- Create an independent ‘Fiscal Council' - a body composed of economic experts independent of government to advise on budgets

- Link retirement age to life expectancy

SLOVENIA

- Introduce incentives to retire later

- Reduce ‘asymmetries' between protections of permanent and temp workers

SPAIN

- Deeper budget cuts if revenues prove worse than projected

- Introduce ‘debt brake' for both national and regional governments

- Warns against the parliament introducing changes to law raising retirement age

- Further measures to raise the effective retirement age

- Warns over role of local authorities in governance of savings banks

- Overhaul the "unwieldy" collective bargaining system, going beyond the current labour market reforms

- Move away from sectoral bargaining to firm-by-firm bargaining

- End automatic extension of collective agreements

- End wage indexation

- Deliver greater wage flexibility

- Reduce employer social security contributions and replace lost revenues with increased or broadened VAT and increased energy taxes, especially fuel taxes

SWEDEN

- Reform mortgage rules

- Reform property taxes

- Reform rent controls and subsidies

UK

- Warns against "slippage" in spending cuts

- Further competition in the banking sector

Read More

It would appear the great global housing recovery of 2011 has been put on hold.

Sales and prices in developed countries are losing momentum after signs of recovery last year, Scotia Capital said Thursday. In some cases, the gains have been wiped out as “increasing nervousness over global economic prospects alongside rising food and fuel prices and persistently high unemployment are keeping potential buyers on the sidelines.”

While cheaper housing will eventually benefit those looking to wade into the market, the bank said that it could be some time before the market in countries such as Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom recover.

The process of repairing bloated public and household balance sheets points to a protracted period of subpar economic growth among debt-heavy developed nations that will restrain household borrowing and spending,” the bank said in a report. “A generally more cautious lending environment also will hold back the pace of recovery.

Highlights from the report, starting with the ugly:

Australia: “Australia’s seemingly impermeable housing boom has languished in recent months. While benefiting from strong economic growth and low unemployment, record high home prices alongside a series of interest rate increases by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) are eroding the nation’s already highly strained affordability. Average home prices in Q1 were unchanged from a year earlier, and down 3½ per cent adjusted for inflation. While the RBA has put further rate hikes on hold for now, the eventual resumption of monetary tightening will reinforce the more muted housing outlook.”

U.K.: “Real estate markets also took a step back in early 2011 following a shortlived recovery last year. Average inflation-adjusted home prices were down 4 per cent y/y in Q1. Notwithstanding ultra-low borrowing costs, recent tax breaks for home buyers and an easing in lending conditions, aggressive fiscal austerity measures and persistently high unemployment will continue to depress activity in the near-term.”

Spain: “Spain’s three-year and counting housing slump shows no sign of letting up. Following steep price declines from 2008-2010, average inflation-adjusted home prices were down more than 8 per cent y/y in Q1 (and a cumulative 20 per cent from their peak). Prices are likely to fall further in the coming year given a massive glut of unsold homes, soaring double-digit unemployment, the elimination of mortgage funding for low income families at the beginning of 2011 and a dearth of foreign vacation property buyers. Average home prices were also still declining in Italy as of the end of 2010.”

U.S.: “Real estate markets have softened again after some encouraging signs of bottoming last year. Average inflation-adjusted home prices were down 5 per cent y/y in Q1. High unemployment and tight credit availability are restraining demand, while a large volume of distressed properties is adding to the downward pressure on prices. The modest pickup in sales over the past six months has been primarily of investor-driven foreclosed properties, with little evidence of broader homebuyer activity since the expiry of purchase incentives in early 2010. Despite gradually improving job markets and near-record housing affordability, the expected addition of at least another 1 million foreclosed properties to the market this year suggests more downside price risk in 2011 after already falling almost 35 per cent (in real terms) from the peak.”

The better:

France: “Average real prices were up 7 per cent y/y in Q1, though weakening global growth expectations may limit further price gains in the near-term. In Germany, for which only annual price data are available, real home prices increased in 2010 for first time in over a decade. Demand and pricing have firmed alongside a strong economy, rising exports and the lowest unemployment rate in three decades. Nonetheless, Germany’s declining population will limit the extent of sustainable price appreciation in coming years.”

Canada: “Reported positive real price appreciation in the first quarter of 2011, with average inflation adjusted home prices up 5 per cent y/y in Q1. The national average, however, is skewed by strong sales, including by foreign buyers, of high-priced properties in the Greater Vancouver Area. Excluding Vancouver, average real prices were up less than 1 per cent y/y in Q1, consistent with a more balanced national market. Housing sales in Canada, while below the record-setting pace seen in at the height of the boom in 2005-2007, are being supported by steady job creation and still attractive borrowing costs. Relatively tight supply is adding to price pressures in several cities. Nonetheless, high home prices, the further tightening in mortgage insurance rules effective mid-March, and the upward drift in fixed mortgage rates this year appear to have slowed demand somewhat, most notably among first-time buyers. We anticipate relatively flat sales volumes and average prices through the latter half of the year.”

Others: “Switzerland reported steady real price increases averaging 4 per cent y/y through Q1, while prices in Sweden were unchanged from a year earlier. Irish property prices rebounded sharply -- and unexpectedly -- in the latter half of 2010, albeit following double-digit declines in both 2008 and 2009. With the Irish economy still marred in recession, and facing an oversupply of housing, the recent upturn will likely prove temporary despite the best housing affordability in a decade.”

Read More

Italy's foreign minister said Libya's uprising had approached a turning point with Col. Moammar Gadhafi's rule coming to an end,

Italy's foreign minister said Libya's uprising had approached a turning point with Col. Moammar Gadhafi's rule coming to an end, and that the country sought an immediate ceasefire in Libya after Gadhafi's fall.

"Four months after the uprising in Libya, we are coming to a turning point: Gadhafi's rule is coming to an end," Franco Frattini said in a speech at the third meeting of the so-called contact group on Libya.

"Our priority is an effective ceasefire following Gadhafi's exit,"

Frattini said at the meeting hosted in the U.A.E. capital of Abu Dhabi. Arab and Western leaders gathered at the meeting said they were committed to working out legal mechanisms to help Libya's National Transitional Council receive funds from frozen Libyan assets worldwide. They also said they waited to hear a political plan from Libya's rebel leaders for a "post conflict" future.

The Council is being represented at the Abu Dhabi meeting by the rebels' de facto foreign minister Mahmoud Jibril, among other officials including finance and oil minister Ali Tarhouni. Tarhouni earlier Thursday appealed for urgent financial commitments, and said the meeting would be a failure if none were secured.

A spokesperson for Italy's foreign minister, Maurizio Massari, separately said the meeting would focus on making sure funds flow to the Transitional Council in coming weeks.

Italy has committed between EUR300 million and EUR400 million in loan and fuel products to Libya, Massari said. Libya's rebel officials said they hoped to seal a deal to import fuel from Italy.

"The [Transitional Council] is telling us that if financial help from the international community doesn't come soon, they are facing severe problems, also [with] legitimacy vis-??-vis the people," he said.

Besides approving a way for individual nations to provide loans to the Council-under a mechanism announced at a meeting in Rome in May--the meeting sought to reach an agreement on unfreezing Libyan assets, he added.

Italy was also keen to discuss securing an "inclusive political process" for Libya as an alternative to Gadhafi's regime. "The alternative could only be a very inclusive political process of national reconciliation including all the components of Libyan society," Massari said.

"We expect the [Council] to come out with a more detailed roadmap on how they intend to manage this political transition for Libya after Gadhafi," he added.

Massari said the issue of sending ground troops into Libya wasn't on Thursday's agenda, and has not been on the international agenda more broadly.

Read More

European Central Bank (ECB) has signalled that it will raise interest rates next month, from 1.25%.

Earlier on Thursday, the ECB kept rates unchanged for the second month in a row, after increasing them in April for the first time in almost two years.

The central bank wants to raise rates again in July to curb inflation in some of the eurozone's 17 member states.

But it has to balance that against the need to leave rates low to boost growth in nations such as Greece and Portugal.

In his press conference, ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet pledged to exert "strong vigilance" on inflation, a signal to the markets that rates will be raised at the next meeting.

"I would say... that it means that we are in a mode where there might be in the next meeting an increase of rates," he said. "But we are never pre-committed," he added.


A July move may prove to be the last”


UK interest rates remain at 0.5%
However, Mr Trichet added that since the ECB's May meeting there has been "continued upward pressure on overall inflation mainly owing to commodity and energy prices".

Inflation in the eurozone was 2.7% in May. The ECB increased its forecast on inflation for 2011 to 2.6% from its previous prediction of 2.3%.

The bank also increased its economic growth forecast for 2011 to 1.9% from 1.7%.

Read More

tanker is believed to have exploded at the plant in Pembroke Dock.

Fire crews have been called from across the area to tackle the blaze.
A spokesman for Chevron said: "At 18:20 local time on June 2 2011 an incident occurred at the Pembroke refinery.
"Emergency services were called and responded immediately and remain on the scene.
"The fire has been extinguished.
"We are taking appropriate action to respond to the situation. We are still in the process of accounting for all personnel."
According to the company website, the Pembroke Dock refinery specialises in processing heavy, lower quality crudes.

Read More