Munich - Germany captain Michael Ballack has defended his recent criticism on coach Joachim Loew, naming it a wakeup call.

"Sometimes you have to go public deliberately in order to shake
things up. There were a few irritations during and after the European
championships," Ballack told German pay-TV network Premiere ahead of
the European Champions League match of his club Chelsea at Girondins
Bordeaux on Wednesday.

Ballack said "you can't discuss everything internally," insisted he
"issued his opinion in decent way" and said "I didn't want to attack
anyone."

Marrakech/Madrid - Environmental organizations Tuesday criticized an agreement reached by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) to promote the recovery of Mediterranean bluefin tuna.

The measures were totally insufficient to protect the species, which overfishing had brought to the brink of collapse, environmentalists said.

The consensus, reached Monday by 45 ICCAT contracting countries and the European Union in the Moroccan city of Marrakech, cuts the total allowable catch for 2009 to
22,000 tons, down from 28,500 tons this year.

The catch is to be further cut to 19,950 tons by 2010.

Islamabad - The chief of Pakistan's Air Force said on Tuesday his forces were fully capable of shooting down the pilotless US aircraft that have carried out more than 20 strikes on militants hideouts in country's tribal region over the last two months.

"As far as the capacity of the air force is concerned, it is ready for any type of air defence whether it is drone" or any other sort of aerial combat system, Air Martial Tanvir Mahmood Ahmad told reporters in southern port city of Karachi.

Washington- The Federal Reserve took two new steps to unfreeze credit for homebuyers, consumers and small businesses Tuesday, committing up to 800 billion dollars in government-backed debt and loans.

The central bank will purchase as much as 600 billion dollars in debt issued or backed by government-chartered housing finance companies. It will also set up a
200-billion-dollar program to support consumer and small-business loans, the Fed announced.

London- The governor of the Bank of England indicated Tuesday that further nationalizations in the British banking sector could not be ruled out if banks continued their lending freeze.

Mervyn King told a parliamentary committee that the resumption of lending by banks was now the most pressing challenge in the battle to revive the ailing economy.

His comments came during questioning by members of the parliamentary Treasury Select Committee about the impact of government measures, including the major bail-out package for banks agreed by the British government on October 8.