The leader of Greece's Pasok party Evangelos Venizelos has said Greece faces a choice between austerity and "mass poverty" in elections on Sunday.

"On Sunday, our people's fate is at stake," Mr Venizelos told the closing rally of his campaign in Athens.

The leader of the centre-right New Democracy party, Antonis Samaras, said the Left was "playing games with the country's European future".

Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Friday he would review the case of a Bangladeshi boy who is France's under-12 chess champion and is threatened with expulsion because he lives here illegally.

"Naturally this young man, if he is a chess champion, merits that his case be examined with the greatest attention," Fillon told France Inter radio when asked about the status of 11-year-old Fahim Alam.

Alam arrived illegally in France in October 2008 with his father and in 2010 was issued with an order to leave the country. 

He was sheltered for a time by an immigrant help group and currently lodges with families from his chess club in the Paris suburb of Creteil.

BRUSSELS - The European Commission has defended its decision not to hold a press conference after Chinese vice premier Li Keqiang's meeting with commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels this week.

"The EU institutions allow Russian and Chinese authorities to dictate who may and who may not be allowed to attend press conferences or whether a press conference will be held at all," Ann Cahill, the vice-president of the International Press Association (API) in Brussels, said at the commission's regular press briefing on Thursday (3 May).

"I would like to protest at this behavior and formally request President Barroso to hold a press briefing after his meeting with his Chinese visitors," she added, prompting a round of applause from international correspondents in the EU headquarters.

The big mistake was his deal with Medvedev, to say "OK now we switch." I think this in fact discredited him and Medvedev, who is in fact probably much more discredited than he is.

To go to the conclusion, first I think that when he decided to modify the constitution, to have a six-year term renewable once, he probably had in mind to be president for the next years up to 2024.

My first conclusion is that it is extremely unlikely that he will do a second term and it might even be quite difficult for him to end the first term. Because the next six years will I think see a continuation of huge social changes in Russia. Especially if Russia is developing well economically.

That will be continuation of the same paradox. In other words, my perception is that the great paradoxical consequence of the successes achieved in the previous decade is that Russia is now entering a new phase which is totally unprecedented in Russian history.

That is a gradual move towards more democracy in the Western sense. That would be gradual of course. I think from a historical viewpoint it would be recognised that to a large extent it is thanks to Putin.

But paradoxically again the consequence will be that Putin will certainly not stay as president for twelve years. Maybe six, maybe less.

(Reuters) - The Zele Velkovic factory in Leskovac, once famous for its thriving textile industry, was one of the city's biggest when Yugoslavia started to implode in 1991.

The next two decades brought a slow decline fueled by chronic mismanagement and a dramatic loss of competitiveness. Where more than 600 worked, now just 70 walk the factory's cavernous halls, the deafening hammering of its old industrial looms barely disguising the emptiness.

Across the street, however, a factory hums and buzzes with the sound of modern machinery, looking like a sleek and shiny spaceship parked in a scrapyard.

Germany's Falke clothing producer is one of a handful of new arrivals to Leskovac, local proof of the recent textile revival around parts of Europe as some manufacturing is relocated from increasingly costly Asia.

Once again European efforts to contain crisis have fallen short. It was perhaps reasonable to hope that the European Central Bank's commitment to provide nearly a trillion dollars in cheap three-year funding to banks would, if not resolve the crisis, contain it for a significant interval. Unfortunately, this has proved little more than a palliative. Weak banks, especially in Spain, have bought more of the debt of their weak sovereigns, while foreigners have sold down their holdings. Markets, seeing banks holding the dubious debt of the sovereigns that stand behind them, grow ever nervous. Again, Europe and the global economy approach the brink.

The architects of current policy and their allies argue that there is insufficient determination to carry on with the existing strategy. Others argue that failure suggests the need for a change in course. The latter view seems to be taking hold among the European electorate.

This is appropriate. Much of what is being urged on and in Europe is likely to be not just ineffective but counterproductive to maintaining the monetary union, restoring normal financial conditions and government access to markets, and re-establishing economic growth.

(Reuters) - Europe needs to balance cutting its debt with measures to stimulate growth, the region's top economics official said on Saturday, as austerity threatens to drag the bloc into its second recession in three years.

During the financial crisis, the message from Brussels has been that struggling euro zone countries must cut their budget deficits and carry out structural reforms to increase competitiveness.

However, with unemployment at record highs and some peripheral countries already deep in recession, Europe must turn its attention to ways to stimulate economic growth to lessen the blow of austerity measures, Olli Rehn, Europe's commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said.

"Fiscal consolidation, while necessary (needs to be) done in a growth-friendly and differentiated way, in order to strike a balance between necessary fiscal consolidation and concerns for growth," he said in a speech at the Free University of Brussels.