Brussels - The presence of more women in the workplace could help lift the European Union out of recession and mitigate the impact of future financial crises, officials in Brussels said Tuesday.

"Discrimination produces inefficiency. And it is precisely during times of crises that we should be most active," said European Equals Opportunity Commissioner Vladimir Spidla at the launch of a European campaign against the gender pay gap.

Brussels - The European Parliament has set the scene for a showdown with other European institutions and with the rest of the world by approving a strict import and trading ban on seals products.

In a vote held late Monday, a parliamentary committee agreed to limit the exemptions to a ban proposed by the European Commission by 25 votes in favour and seven against. It also ignored the view of their rapporteur, who had proposed a form of labelling rather than an outright ban.

Seal derivatives are found in a variety of products, including bags, motorcyclists' gloves and Omega 3 fatty acid supplements.

Brussels - The 20-year-old man suspected of killing two toddlers and a teacher in a knife attack at a Belgian nursery in January has confessed to the murder of a pensioner.

Kim De Gelder admitted his involvement in the death of 73-year-old Elza Van Raemdonck de Vrasene during a court hearing, the Belga news agency reported Tuesday.

Belgian investigators had linked the young man to the death of the pensioner - found stabbed to death in her home in the East Flemish town of Beveren on the evening of January 16 - not long after his arrest over the January 23 kindergarten massacre.

Brussels - NATO foreign ministers may decide to "hit the re-set button" and restore formal ties with Russia at their meeting in Brussels on Thursday, diplomats said Monday.

The main forum for direct talks, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), was suspended by the alliance in the aftermath of Russia's August invasion of Georgia and Moscow's subsequent recognition of the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

But there is now a growing consensus within the 26-member alliance that face-to-face talks with Russia should resume.

Brussels - The annual rate of inflation in the 16-member euro

Brussels  - France defied its critics and demanded European Union support for the bloc's crisis-stricken car industry at an EU summit in Brussels on Sunday, diplomatic sources said.

The call came a day after the EU's second-largest member backed down on a bail-out plan which would have obliged producers to give preferential treatment to French factories and suppliers.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy now wants the EU as a whole to take steps to keep the bloc's auto producers afloat, diplomatic sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.