Riga - A government bailout of Latvia's largest indigenous bank, Parex Banka, was set to be finalized Monday after the European Commission (EC) signalled it would not block the deal.

Latvian Finance Ministry spokesperson Diana Berzina told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that an "unofficial okay" had been received from the EC along with their comments on the deal.

She added that final confirmation from the EC was likely one or two days after the legal document was due to be signed in a closed meeting on Monday night.

Brussels - European Jews on Monday marked the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's Kristallnacht pogrom while warning that their situation in Europe is worse than it was 60 years ago.

"Today we feel worse than after the Second World War," Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), said at the ceremonies in Brussels marking the Kristallnacht.

"What politicians and governments nowadays in Europe permit themselves is something which we could not have imagined 10 or 20 years ago," Kantor said.

There were now more neo-Nazis and Nazi sympathisers in Europe than there were Jews, he said. Increasingly, remembrance of the Holocaust is fading away.

London - Manchester City's owners insisted Monday that they support manager Mark Hughes, despite a string of poor results.

City lost 2-1 at home to Tottenham on Sunday, their seventh defeat of the season seeing them slide to 13th in the table.

"We are calm and under control, and we on the board have the highest regard for Mark," said chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak after the first meeting of the new City board.

City was bought by a consortium representing the Abu Dhabi royal family in September.

Nairobi/Goma - The UN childrens emergency fund UNICEF warned Monday of the danger of a cholera catastrophe in the conflict-ridden North Kivu region of eastern Congo, with international relief groups saying their work was being hampered by the security situation.

UNICEF coupled the warning with a demand that safe access to the region's refugees be guaranteed.

London - At the packed Remembrance Day service in the chapel of the Royal Hospital Chelsea for War Pensioners in London, 8-year-old Emily squeezed her grandmother's hand as rousing hymns were sung and the Last Post was rendered for the victims of war.

It may be 90 years since the guns fell silent in the "war to end all wars," but this year's anniversary of the end of World War I has brought Britons of all ages and generations together like never before to commemorate past and present conflicts.

Amman - Visiting Austrian President Heinz Fischer on Monday discussed with Jordanian Prime Minister Nader Dahabi the prospects of boosting bilateral ties particularly in the economic and environmental fields, the official Petra news agency reported.

At the meeting, officials from the two countries signed an accord for cooperation in the field of environmental protection, it said.