Brussels - The European Union's executive on Tuesday gave the green light to a Latvian state bail-out of the country's largest locally-based bank, Parex Banka, saying that it was "necessary to avoid a serious disturbance in the Latvian economy."

The 200-million-lats (350-million-dollar) bail-out is "limited in time and scope to the minimum necessary to restore the financing, require an adequate fee level and provide safeguards to minimize distortions of competition," a press release from the European Commission said.

Mons, Belgium - NATO should boost the number of its troops in Afghanistan by up to 20,000 men, a 40-per-cent increase from current numbers, if it wants to stabilize the country, NATO's top military commander said Monday.

The United States is set to deploy an extra brigade (up to 5,000 men) to Afghanistan in 2009, and "we are looking at how to resource a request from (NATO command in Afghanistan) for three more brigades," NATO military commander General Bantz J Craddock told journalists at the alliance's headquarters in Belgium.

Brussels - The European Union should lead international efforts to protect the Arctic region from global warming and from the resulting increase in the exploitation by humans of its natural resources, officials in Brussels said Thursday.

In a document submitted to the European Parliament and to member states, the European Commission warned that the Arctic region was becoming "increasingly at risk from the combined effects of climate change and increased human activity."

Brussels - The 15-member eurozone officially slumped into recession Friday after its economy contracted by 0.2 per cent for a second quarter in a row, the European statistical office said.

Figures from Eurostat showed that gross domestic product in two of the euro area's biggest economies, Germany and Italy, fell by 0.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2008, after falling by 0.4 per cent in the second.

The other eurozone heavyweight, France, saw its GDP grow by just 0.1 per cent in the third quarter, after contracting by 0.3 per cent in the previous three months.

Dhabi, 13th Nov. 2008 -- President H. H.

Brussels - The European Union will fail to meet its goal of cutting energy consumption by 20 per cent by 2020 unless it makes better buildings and products, the bloc's executive said Thursday.

The warning was accompanied by a package designed to increase the bloc's energy efficiency and reduce its dependency on energy imports.

One proposal involves extending popular energy-efficiency labels now found on consumer goods such as fridges and washing machines to industrial products and buildings.

Another involves creating more off-shore wind farms and investing more money in gas and electricity networks.