Brussels - The European Commission announced Thursday it was providing 4 million euros (5.1 million dollars) in emergency aid to the Democratic Republic of Congo, as diplomats raced to find ways to help stop unrest in the African country.

The European Union's aid commissioner, Louis Michel, met Congolese President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa on Thursday and planned to meet his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, in Kigali on Friday, officials in Brussels said.

Kagame held talks over the phone with the EU's top diplomat, foreign policy chief Javier Solana, on Thursday.

Lusaka - Allegations by Zambia's opposition leader Michael Sata of vote rigging cast a pall over Thursday's election to choose a successor to deceased president Levy Mwanawasa and stoked fears of violence in Africa's largest copper producer.

The mood on voting day itself was calm as Zambians made their way from dawn to over 6,000 polling stations nationwide to choose a successor to Mwanawasa, who died of a stroke in August.

Madrid - Spain's Queen Sofia opposes gay marriage and doesn't understand the need for gay pride parades, according to a report in the daily El Pais about a newly published biography on the queen.

According to the report, the queen is not opposed, in principle, to homosexuals living together or forming unions. "But you can't characterize this as marriage," she told the newspaper.

She proposed alternate names - civil union, for example - for such pairings.

She also questioned the need for gay pride parades.

Berlin - German unemployment fell to 16-year low in October, defying the economic gloom facing the nation, data released Thursday showed.

Seasonally unadjusted German unemployment fell to below 3 million for the time in 16 years, the Nuremberg-based Federal Labour Agency said with the numbers dropping by 84,000 in October to 2.997 million. This was 437,000 less than in the same month last year.

After dropping by a revised 28,000 in September, seasonally adjusted unemployment, which analysts see as pointing to long-term market trends, fell by another 26,000 to 

Reykjavik - Cash-strapped Iceland was set to allow its currency to float as soon as the country secures new loans, Prime Minister Geir Haarde said Thursday in parliament.

Haarde further said the cost of the collapse of the North Atlantic nation's banks may total the equivalent of some 9.4 billion dollars or "85 per cent of GDP" last year.

A week ago, Reykjavik signed a 2.1-billion-dollar emergency loan with the International Monetary Fund to help stabilize Iceland's economy.

Washington - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to the Middle East next week for discussions on the peace process with Israeli and Palestinian officials, the State Department said Thursday.

Rice will travel to the region on Wednesday, one day after the US presidential election, for meetings in Israel, the West Bank, Jordan and Egypt during the five-day trip, spokesman Sean McCormack said.