Warsaw - Some 200 labor union members in Warsaw occupied Prime Minister Donald Tusk's office on Wednesday, demanding a meeting with Tusk on a bill that would slash early retirement.

Members of "August 80" - a more hard-line group than the Solidarity union - said they wouldn't leave until they got a meeting. Tusk was at the time in Frankfurt for talks with the European Central Bank on Poland's entry into the eurozone.

Berlin - Scottish actress Tilda Swinton, 48, will head the jury at next year's edition of the Berlin Film Festival from February 5-15, organizers announced Wednesday.

"I'm pleased that the wonderful Tilda Swinton will be our jury president in 2009," said Dieter Kosslick, director of the Berlinale.

"Her commanding screen presence has made an indelible impression in contemporary, innovative filmmaking," he added.

Swinton has received numerous international awards for her work - most recently the 2008 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for her role in the film Michael Clayton.

Riga - The prime minister of Belarus, Sergey Sidorski, took advantage of his new-found freedom to travel Wednesday by visiting neighbouring Latvia in his first official trip to a European Union member state since travel restrictions on members of the Belarusian government were lifted on October 13.

Transport and business were on the agenda when Sidorski met his Latvian counterpart, Ivars Godmanis, but no mention was made of sensitive issues such as human rights or missile systems.

Madrid  - French police Wednesday detained two suspected members of the militant Basque separatist group ETA, Spanish police sources said.

The two were captured during a routine police check as they were cycling near Tarascon-sur-Ariege in the south of the country. They were armed with a pistol and a revolver.

The suspects had documents related to ETA in their bags, the sources said. They also carried fake identity documents.

Baghdad - Two sisters in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul were among a dozen civilians killed in Iraqi violence on Wednesday, which included two bomb attacks in the capital Baghdad.

An unidentified gunmen shot and killed one of the two sisters in front of her house while she was waiting for the bus and then stormed the house and opened fire on the family, killing the other sister and injuring their mother, who was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment," the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency quoted a police source as saying.

London - The global economic downturn must not be used as an excuse to delay urgent action on tackling climate change and securing energy supplies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned Wednesday.

The call came as the Paris-based IEA published its annual World Energy Outlook in London which predicted that, at current trends, carbon dioxide emissions would rise by