Geneva  - The sub-prime mortgage crisis has exposed the crisis in governments' housing policies and could still hit the middle classes, the United Nations' expert on urban planning said on Monday.

Sub-prime mortgages, given by lenders to people who could not afford them, are widely blamed for triggering the meltdown in US banks and the global liquidity crisis and economic downturn.

Brussels - Eurogroup finance ministers were to meet in Brussels on Monday evening amid growing concerns that the European economy may get stuck in recession until 2010, shedding some 6 million jobs in the process.

Latest projections from the European Central Bank (ECB) suggest euro area gross domestic product (GDP) could shrink by up to 3.2 per cent this year, far more than previously expected.

GDP could either fall by 0.7 per cent or rise at the same rate in 2010, the ECB said.

Vilnius  - Lithuania's central bank intervened Monday to quell devaluation jitters that have gathered pace in the Baltic state in recent days.

After a weekend during which currency exchange offices reported unusually strong demand for foreign currency, Reinoldijus Sarkinas, governor of the Bank of Lithuania, declared that there was no plan to change the current exchange rate of the national currency, the litas.

New York  - Business partners of the insurance giant AIG have, since the firm was bailed out by the US government in September 2008, received some 50 billion dollars in payments, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Beneficiaries of bail-out funds from the firm number some two dozen, including the Goldman Sachs group and Germany's Deutsche Bank AG, the paper said.

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank each received some 6 billion dollars in payments between September and December 2008, to cover exposures they had at the failing insurer.

Washington  - The US Congress has been forced to adopt a temporary funding bill to keep government services running through Wednesday, after the Senate failed to agree on a budget that would last until September.

The legislation was needed to avoid a shutdown of most federal agencies at midnight Friday. The House of Representatives and Senate voted to extend government funding until Tuesday and the measure will be signed by President Barack Obama later Friday.

Washington  - US President Barack Obama went on the road Friday hoping to tout the success of his economic recovery plan by addressing a group of police cadets in Ohio whose jobs were saved by the funding in his stimulus package.

Obama appeared in the city of Columbus, where officials are facing a 13-million-dollar budget shortfall and had informed the graduating class that they would not be able to join the police force. Their jobs were saved after the city secured 4 million dollars from the stimulus package.