London - Officials of the British Treasury are travelling to Iceland Friday to discuss a solution to the growing crisis of British deposits and investments locked up in nationalized Icelandic banks, the British government said.

The Icelandic move to take the country's main banks into public ownership has meant that British private savings and investments are blocked in accounts of Icelandic bank subsidiaries in Britain.

It has sparked sharp exchanges between British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Icelandic counterpart, Geir Haarde.

On Thursday it emerged that 850 million pounds (1.4 billion dollars) of public sector investments by local councils, including the police and transport bodies, could be affected.

London - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on governments around the world to follow the example of Britain in taking "ground-breaking" decisions to stabilize the banking system.

Writing in the Times newspaper Friday, Brown said governments should put money into struggling banks and offer similar guarantees worth hundreds of billions to persuade the banks to start lending to each other again.

Singapore - Singapore entered its first recession since 2002 after its economy contracted for the second-straight quarter, prompting its government to revise downward its projections of the city-state's 2008 economic growth.

Singapore's gross domestic product shrank at an annualized rate of 6.3 per cent in the July-September quarter, compared with the second quarter, when the prosperous South-East Asian city's economy contracted 5.7 per cent, the Trade and Industry Ministry said.

In real, year-on-year terms, the third-quarter slowdown was measured at 0.5 per cent.

Amsterdam - The Netherlands late Thursday made available another 20 billion euros to shore up the liquidity of banks embattled by the global financial crisis, Finance Minister Wouter Bos said.

Dutch central bank chief Nout Wellink said the funds would be made available for all financial firms that need it, including insurance groups.

Washington - President George W Bush's massive bailout of the finance sector isn't very conservative or Republican - and he has no problem expressing the discomfort he feels by breaking with his political ideology to rescue Wall Street.

While in the White House, Bush was supposed to represent the conservative base of the Republican Party opposed to large government spending, taxes, economic restraints or Democratic attempts to regulate the free market.

Washington - US President George W Bush on Thursday called for a "common policy" between the United States and Europe to address the financial crisis that has threatened the world's economy.

Bush, meeting with Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic, said he discussed "our common desire to work with our European friends to develop a best as possible common policy."