Helsinki - Economic output in Iceland was estimated to drop some 10 per cent next year, the prime minister of Iceland said Monday.

"We are going to get through this crisis and move on," Prime Minister Geir Haarde told reporters before a meeting of Nordic prime ministers in Finland.

Haarde said he hoped the cash-strapped North Atlantic nation will be able to get loans from its Nordic neighbours.

Paris - Despite a steady early session on Wall Street, French shares began the week with another weak performance on Monday, with banking shares leading the decline.

The Paris Bourse's CAC blue-chip index ended the day off by 3.96 per cent, at 3,067.35, with declining issues outnumbering winners by about 12 to 1.

New York - United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday expressed "extreme concern" over increasing attacks on UN peacekeepers and civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northern provinces.

Ban cited the situation in North Kivu, Rumangabo and Goma, where a local armed group called the National Congress for the Defence of People attacked UN peacekeepers and government military troops, in violation of a ceasefire.

Washington - The White House refused to comment Monday on reports of a deadly US military strike in Syria near the border with Iraq that has outraged Damascus and other Arab countries.

"I'm not going to comment on it at all," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The Syrian government and Arab leaders in the region have expressed anger over the purported US helicopter raid Sunday targeting militants in the town of Abu Kamal.

The Syrian government says civilians, including children, were among the eight dead.

Abu Dhabi - What would Richard Wagner have thought?

The ceiling of the auditorium seemed to bend under the weight of gold stucco, spectators sank into plush seats, and as the orchestra let loose, someone pulled out a mobile phone and whispered greetings into the beyond.

The seven-star Emirates Palace Hotel is hardly evocative of the hard seats filled by worshipful Wagnerians at the German composer's opera house in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth.

It looks more like something out of Thousand and One Nights than Ring of the Nibelung.

Helsinki