The newly ordered planes, A350 and A330-300 models, are smaller than the two-deck A380, the world's biggest passenger plane. At official list prices, the value of the 60-plane order is some $13 billion (8.25 billion euros).

The colorful handover ceremony Monday was the first from a new A380 delivery centre set up by Airbus in Hamburg to accommodate airlines during the weeks of testing before the money is handed over and a jet is flown away.

The only other A380s yet in service are two with Singapore Airlines. They were picked up from the Airbus fuselage factory in Toulouse, France, which divides up the tasks of manufacture with the Hamburg factory.

The chief of the United Arab Emirates airline, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, said the airline had ordered 30 of the A350 model and 30 of the A330-300 jets.

It had already ordered 58 of the biggest in Airbus' range, the A380.

LONDON: The traditional British pub is in peril.

Squeezed by a nationwide smoking ban, rising costs, competition from supermarkets and the economic downturn, the pub industry reported Monday that beer sales have fallen to their lowest level since the Great Depression.

Pub managers around the country are now pulling some 14 million pints a day, 1.6 million fewer than last year and 7 million less than at the height of the market in 1979.

The pressures on the industry are speeding up a long-term decline -- more than 1,400 pubs called last orders for the final time in 2007 and the Campaign for Real Ale claims that more than half Britain's villages are "dry" for the first time since the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Rob Hayward, the chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, whose members brew 98 percent of Britain's beer and include nearly two-thirds of the country's pubs, urged the government to rethink heavy taxes which the industry blames in large part for its woes.

Severe storms and floods in Ukraine and Romania has killed at least 18 people.

Five days of heavy rainfall in Ukraine's Carpathian Mountains killed 13 people, including five children. At least two people are missing.

The floods damaged more than 21,000 houses, the emergency ministry said in a statement.

The government has evacuated more than 7,000 people and more than 300 towns and villages have been left without electricity.

With damages estimated at more than $300mn, the flooding was declared a national disaster by Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian president.

Beijing's Olympic organisers are planning a new set of emergency measures to reduce pollution after the draconian steps introduced a week ago failed to halt a grimy haze from smothering the host city.

The air quality has failed to reach national standards for four of the seven days since the city took more than a million cars off the roads and shut down hundreds of factories.

With less than two weeks until the opening ceremony, the organisers are preparing more drastic step to ensure that the "Greyjing" tag does not undermine its promise of a "Green Olympics" and force the postponement of endurance events like the marathon, triathlon and 10km open-water swim.

According to the China Daily, all construction sites and more factories in and around Beijing may be temporarily closed if the air quality deteriorates during the games.

PARIS: Parisians and tourists so eagerly embraced a citywide bike-sharing plan that was begun a year ago that Mayor Bertrand Delanoë is proposing a four-wheeled version, using electric cars.

Under the plan, a driver could pick up a car on the Right Bank, snake up the slopes of Montmartre, then drop it off -- and pay only for the minutes spent behind the wheel. But cars, even electric ones, are already proving more divisive than bikes.

With the price of gas steadily rising and parking in Paris a chronic headache, some drivers are delighted by the new project. Others, though, see it as a step backward, fearing it would produce more traffic and dependence on cars in an already congested city.

The program, called Autolib', is expected to begin in late 2009 or early 2010 with a fleet of 4,000 electric cars, 2,000 within Paris and 2,000 in the suburbs.

A city council has blocked its staff from looking at websites about atheism.

Lawyers at the National Secular Society said the move by Birmingham City Council was "discriminatory" and they would consider legal action.

The rules also ban sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity.

The city council declined to comment on the possible legal action, but said the new system helped make it easier for managers to monitor staff web access.

The authority's Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".