Brussels - US Vice President Joe Biden was Tuesday holding talks in Brussels with the chief of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and with European ambassadors to NATO on how to step up the alliance's efforts in Afghanistan.

The talks come just five days after US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the NATO headquarters, suggesting the new US administration was keen to re-engage with its European allies as it struggles to defeat the Taliban insurgency.

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Brussels - The European Union is giving 700,000 euros (890,000 dollars) in aid to help provide drinking water, blankets and medicines to some 50,000 people affected by recent floods in Pacific islands, officials in Brussels said Monday.

The decision acts on an EU fact-finding mission to the region, which identified the region's most urgent needs.

These include the provision of clean drinking water, fixing sewerage systems and medicines designed to treat and prevent outbreaks of diarrhoea, respiratory infection, malaria and dengue fever.

Brussels - The European Union's investment bank is to boost to almost 7 billion euros (8.9 billion dollars) its loans to the auto industry to develop climate-friendly cars, but it cannot save the sector from economic crisis, the bank's manager said Monday.

"By the end of June, we will probably have approved loans totalling 7 billion euros" to the car industry, the vast majority being awarded to clean-car projects, Philippe Maystadt, president of the European Investment Bank, told journalists in Brussels.

Brussels - Shares in fallen Belgian banking giant Fortis surged by over 40 per cent on Monday morning as investors gave an enthusiastic welcome to a sell-off deal agreed with French bank BNP Paribas over the weekend.

As markets opened, Fortis shares jumped up to 1.42 euros (1.80 dollars), 42.6 per cent above the close on Friday. They fell back during early trading to 1.20 euros, 25 per cent above Friday's close.

Brussels  - The Belgian government, the French bank BNP Paribas SA and Fortis, the Belgian-Dutch financial services company, agreed overnight to a plan for the divestment of Fortis' Belgian financial units.

BNP Paribas, France's largest bank, is to take over 75 per cent of Fortis Bank in a deal valued at 2.88 billion euros (3.64 billion dollars), the Belgian news agency Belga reported Saturday, citing the government.

The remaining 25-per-cent stake would remain in the hands of the government, the report said.