Tokyo - Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso on Thursday announced a new economic stimulus package worth about 26.9 trillion yen (276.33 billion dollars) to battle the impact of the global financial crisis, as speculation over an interest rate cut by the Bank of Japan mounted.

"The most important thing is to allay concerns about people's livelihoods," Aso said at a press conference.

Riga - The three Baltic stock exchanges stayed fairly flat
Thursday in a day of thin trading, but a pharmaceutical company
provided some cheer.

The NASDAQ OMX Tallinn exchange in Estonia was down 1.76 per cent,
the Vilnius exchange in Lithuania was down 1.13 per cent and the Riga
exchange in Latvia rose by a marginal 0.12 per cent.

The Baltic Benchmark Index (BBI), which includes data from all three exchanges, closed down 1.45 per cent at 273.9.

Most notable company news of the day came from Latvian

Baghdad - Iraq will sign a long-term security agreement with the US only if the latter agrees to compromise on Iraqi-proposed amendments, the semi-official al-Sabah newspaper said Thursday.

The Iraqi government had handed the US embassy in Baghdad an amended draft on Tuesday, although both parties had agreed in mid- October that the last draft was final.

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) would extend the mandate of US forces in Iraq beyond the end of this year, when the UN authorization runs out.

Hamburg - The first snow of the autumn blanketed parts of central and southern Germany on Thursday, leading to power outages and numerous accidents on slippery roads.

A 29-centimetre layer of snow covered the Zollernalb district of the south-west state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where police closed roads blocked by trees that collapsed under the weight of the snow.

Hundreds of homes in the city of Reutlingen were without power after electricity pylons were brought down in the abrupt change of weather.

Kabul- A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-filled vest inside a ministry in the centre of Kabul Thursday, killing five people and wounding six while four police officers were killed in a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan, officials said.

Security guards at the Ministry of Information and Culture opened fire on the bomber but he managed to enter the building and blow himself up, said a ministry official, who did not want to be named.

Witness Mahmoud Jan said he heard sounds of small-arms fire after the blast.

Rome - Italy "probably helped save" Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi's life when it warned Libya of a 1986 US air strike, Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam said Thursday.

Shalgam's claim, made at a conference in Rome, referred to an April 15, 1986 operation in which the then US president, Ronald Reagan, ordered several attacks against Libya, the ANSA news agency reported.

Shalgam, who was Libya's ambassador to Rome at the time, said he was personally warned of the US intentions a day before the raids took place by "mutual friend" sent by Italy's then prime minister, Bettino Craxi.