Brussels - Europe faces a deep and broad recession this year, the European Commission predicted Monday, with economic activity in the 16-strong eurozone set to shrink by 1.9 per cent as a result of the world's worst economic crisis since World War II.

"The economic horizon has now significantly darkened as the European Union economy is hit by the financial crisis that deepened during the autumn and is taking a toll on business and consumer confidence," the European Union's executive arm said in presenting its latest economic forecasts.

Prague  - Big Brother would like to be watching you. But he can't, because his computer has crashed.

That was the problem occupying European Union interior ministers on Thursday in Prague as they debated the 27-member bloc's continuing inability to share the fingerprints and photos of foreigners entering the border-free Schengen zone because of computer bugs.

Prague - The European Union's plan for a new database to monitor the fingerprints and photographs of people entering the bloc has already cost more than double its budget, experts said at a meeting of EU interior ministers on Thursday.

And the project was so far behind schedule that a crisis was looming, the ministers told the press at the informal talks in Prague.

Experts at the meeting estimated that the second-generation Schengen Information System (SIS II), originally expected to cost 23 million euros (30 million dollars), had already cost between 60 and 80 million euros, diplomats told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Moscow/Kiev  - Ukraine's government is divided by internal differences over entering new talks with Russia to end the gas delivery impasse, news reports said Thursday.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency that a new round of talks on resuming gas transit to the European Union was scheduled for Saturday in Moscow.

However, President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday evening rejected the Kremlin's invitation a crisis summit with all gas-importing countries on Saturday as not suitable.

Singapore  - Gareth Thomas, British minister of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform, called for a new approach to speed up progress in talks for a free trade agreement between the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), according to a report in the Straits Times Thursday.

The EU-ASEAN trade pact negotiations, which started in 2007, would progress much more quickly if individual trade pacts were sealed first, serving as a prelude to a regional deal, he pointed out.

Brussels/Strasbourg, France  - The European Union on Wednesday threatened to ditch Russia and Ukraine as gas suppliers and to encourage legal action against their state-owned energy companies unless they immediately resume shipments to Europe.

"Russia and Ukraine are showing they are incapable of delivering on their commitments to some European member states," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.