Delegations from Germany and Russia meet in St. Petersburg this week for the traditional gathering of minds from the the political and civil spheres of both nations. However, this year, things are different.

The next round of Russian-German intergovernmental consultations known as the St. Petersburg Dialogue begins on Tuesday, Sept. 30 with Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German delegation traveling to the Russian city to meet with President Dmitry Medvedev and members of his government.

The dialogue, which was first launched six years ago by predecessors Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schroeder, is an open discussion forum intended to lend new impetus to German-Russian relations in a wide range of sectors, from economics and politics to education and science, cultural relations and religion.

It is supported by political and private-sector foundations and private businesses in Germany and in Russia, as well as the two governments. A cross-section of experts from all fields are represented at the event.

Not a single member of the opposition won a seat in Belarus' parliamentary elections, which was slammed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as "undemocratic."

Among the problems noted by OSCE preliminary findings on Monday, Sept. 29, as "bad" or "very-bad" was Belarusian ballot counting often taking place behind closed doors barred to independent observers, making free and fair election practically impossible.

"Despite some minor improvements, the Sept. 28 parliamentary election in Belarus ultimately fell short of OSCE commitments for democratic elections ... The election took place in a strictly controlled environment with a barely visible campaign," the OSCE said in its report.

"Voting was generally well conducted but the process deteriorated considerably during the vote count. Promises to ensure transparency of the vote count were not implemented," the monitors' report said. "The count was assessed as bad or very bad in 48 percent of polling stations visited. Where access was possible several cases of deliberate falsification of results were observed."

ussia is providing four helicopters to the European Union's peacekeeping mission in Chad, despite simmering tension over the situation in Georgia, EU defense officials and diplomats have confirmed.

The four Russian transport helicopters are expected to begin operations in November and will provide more "flexibility" to the bloc's EUFOR mission, its operational commander, Lieutenant General Patrick Nash, said at a press conference in Brussels on Monday, Sept. 29.

"We want to be active, we want to be in places where we can react, and we want to have the element of surprise: Helicopters in a country the size of Chad give you that extra dimension. And the more helicopters I have, the more flexibility the force commander has," Nash said.

At the same time, Nash stressed that EUFOR was not dependent on the Russian contribution, noting that it represented less than "one third" of the mission's current helicopter capabilities.

Consisting of 3,700 soldiers, EUFOR is the EU's largest ever military mission.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Sweden and the Netherlands are the best EU performers when it comes to broadband internet, while Bulgaria and Cyprus come last, according to a report by the European Commission.

"Both countries [Sweden and the Netherlands] have a favourable socio-economic context, with a high propensity to use advanced services and a competitive environment that has ensured affordable prices and high speeds," says the commission in its paper on broadband performance in the EU member states.

On average, some 36 percent of EU households currently enjoy high-speed internet access

To measure that performance, Brussels is using a so-called Broadband Performance Index (BPI) based on a series of factors, including speed, rural coverage, affordability, innovation, as well as socio-economic dimensions.

Denmark, the UK, France and non-EU member Norway follow Sweden and The Netherlands, while Poland, Romania, Cyprus and Bulgaria come last.

The European Union has extended its civil nuclear co-operation with India in a move championed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is expected to sign a bilateral deal with the Indian prime minister on Tuesday (30 September).

The move, which comes despite India not being a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, echoes a similar agreement signed between the Asian country and the United States.

Nicolas Sarkozy hopes to strike a bilateral deal with India while extending EU civil nuclear co-operation with the Asian country

The development was announced following a EU-India summit in Marseille on Monday (29 September).

Additionally, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso hailed a "joint action plan on climate change" sealed with India, adding that civil nuclear co-operation would be extended with the Asian country on nuclear fusion.

Finland has introduced stricter rules on gun permits, following a school shooting in which 11 people died.

Handgun permits would no longer be granted to first-time applicants, the interior ministry said.

Instead, they must train for at least a year at a gun club before being allowed to apply for a permit.

All applicants must also provide a note from a doctor about their mental health and sit an interview with police. The new rules cover pistols and revolvers.

ROME: Italian police made sweeping arrests against the mob Tuesday, targeting a powerful clan as well as three suspects linked to a recent gangland-style slaying of six African immigrants near Naples, authorities said.

In a series of raids in Naples and surrounding areas, where the Camorra crime syndicate is based, police also seized assets worth €100 million ($143.5 million) and weapons, including two AK-47s believed to have been used Sept. 18 against the Africans, police and government officials said.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni hailed the operation as a serious blow to the Camorra organization.

"We have waged war on the Camorra," Maroni said. "We want to exert pressure like never before and keep this pressure up until the war is won."

Britain's overstretched households have collectively spent more than they earned and resorted to dipping into savings to meet soaring living costs for the first time since the late 1950s, when Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister.

The bleak picture was revealed today in official figures, which laid bare the full scale of the squeeze on families as the economic downturn forces the cost of living to spiral upwards and household incomes to grow only weakly.

The intensity of the crunch on family budgets was emphasised as the figures also showed that consumer spending in the second quarter dipped by 0.1 per cent, registering its first outright fall since early 1995.

The figures suggest that consumers resorted to cutting back on spending between April and June after being forced to draw down on their savings during the previous three months.

Italians are noted for their aversion to paying taxes but this time residents of Ravenna can be excused for saying "no" to the latest wheeze dreamt up by local bureaucrats: a rain tax.

Arguing that heavy rain causes severe damage to infrastructure, buildings and agriculture in the Po valley, the authorities in the Emilia Romagna region have quietly added 3 per cent to water bills to maintain and improve drainage systems after downpours. The Ravenna water board - which is so enthusiastic about the new tax that it wants to backdate it three years - claims that the payments will save it €1 million (£800,000) a year.

Consumer organisations in Ravenna are urging householders not to pay up. "This is just another tax in disguise," Roberto Passino, spokesman for a protest group, said.

Gurkhas who fought alongside the British Army have won their battle to settle in the UK following a High Court test case.

The result was welcomed by actress Joanna Lumley, whose late father served with the 6th Gurkha Rifles, as a chance to "right a great wrong and wipe out a national shame that has stained us all".

The six claimants who led the battle by 2,000 Gurkhas for the right to live in the UK included veterans of the Gulf War and Falklands conflicts who currently live in Nepal and Hong Kong.

They all applied to settle in the UK but were denied entry by immigration officials because of a policy that barred those who had not served since the Nepalese fighters' base moved from Hong Kong to Kent following the island nation's handover to China in 1997.

Their lawyer argued in the judicial review that all other foreign soldiers serving in the British Army are allowed to settle in the UK and the country owed the Gurkhas a "special debt" of gratitude for their brave service, which saw 50,000 killed and 13 win Victoria Crosses.

Digital body scanners which leave little to the imagination will be used by airport security on passengers travelling across the European Union within two years.

According to a draft European Commission regulation, seen by The Daily Telegraph, the new millimetre wave imaging scanners are to be used "individually or in combination, as a primary or secondary means and under defined conditions" to provide a "virtual strip search" of travellers.

The new EU regulation, which will be binding on Britain, is intended to enter into force across the continent by the end of April 2010.

Dominic Grieve, Shadow Home Secretary, stressed that while body scanners may be an effective security tool "the implementation must be carried out by the British government in a proportionate manner, based on UK security requirements rather than the dictates of Brussels".

"Ministers need to explain publicly and transparently what these proposals are and why they are suitable to the UK," he said.

Scientists have uncovered an ancient and elaborate source of pain relief that is based purely on the power of the mind, according to research published today.

Brain scans of volunteers who were subjected to electrical shocks revealed that Roman Catholics felt less pain than atheists and agnostics when they were shown a painting of the Virgin Mary.

European governments were forced to rescue a number of financial institutions hit by the US-born crisis, sending stock markets plummeting. Washington's rejection of a $700-billion bailout caused world markets to plummet.

Only a few weeks ago, banks in the euro zone financial sector were said to be safe from the US-born financial crisis, but now, as the global financial situation gradually worsens, five European governments have had to step in to prop up financial institutions.

Separately, news emerged late Monday, Sept. 29, that the US House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion measure to rescue the failing American financial system. The bailout bill was defeated after many House Republicans ignored their leaders' pleas and voted against it. A majority of Democrats voted in favor of the plan.

"I feel they've taken leave of their senses," said European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson of US lawmakers Monday in an interview with BBC, "and I hope that in Europe we will not see politicians and parliamentarians replicating the sort of irresponsibility and political partisanship that we have seen in Washington."

European authorities in Brussels, Frankfurt and at EU member state level are scrambling to save the continent's financial system after bank stocks plunged when US lawmakers rejected a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street on Monday (29 September).

Banks are petrified of lending to one another for more than one day, requiring central banks to flood their coffers with the money they need to stay in business.

After yesterday's part-nationalisation of Belgo-Dutch banking giant Fortis and the nationalisation of the UK's Bradford & Bingley, Belgium-based Dexia, the biggest provider of lending to local governments in the world, could be the next financial institution to be rescued by taxpayers.

In an email from Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme, the country's federal government reached an agreement with Belgium's regional assemblies to jointly support the bank, Bloomberg News reported

PARIS: Dexia, a French-Belgian lender, received a capital injection of more than $9 billion from public shareholders on Tuesday as a deepening global credit crisis continued to shake European banks. Meanwhile in Ireland, the government backed all deposits in the country's banks.

After all-night negotiations, the Belgian government announced that it and other Belgian stakeholders would invest $4.26 billion in Dexia. The French government will contribute $1.42 billion, the French state-controlled Caisse des Depots $2.84 billion and the Luxembourg government $518.82 million, according to a statement from the Belgian prime minister's office.

Shares in Dexia, which had been suspended at the open, vaulted 18.1 percent to €8.45 in late morning trading.

"The market is encouraged, this restores confidence" said Georg Krijgh, an analyst at Rabo Securities in Amsterdam. "It shows the government is supporting the banks and makes Dexia one of most solvent in the region, with Fortis and KBC."

As the US financial crisis continues to unsettle global financial markets, Brussels has said American legislators need to start meeting their obligations. But will the strong words have any effect?

In an unusually strong statement, the European Union has called American lawmakers to order for failing to reach agreement on a $700 billion plan to shore up foundering financial institutions and markets.

"The US must take its responsibility in this situation, must show statesmanship for the sake of their own companies and for the sake of the world," European Commission spokesman Joseph Laitenberger told journalists.

The statement came after the US House of Representatives narrowly rejected the bailout plan on Monday, September 29.

French President Sarkozy was to meet with French banking and insurance chiefs Tuesday in the wake of the refusal of the US Congress to approve a finance bail-out.

The aim of the meeting at the Elysee Palace is to "review the situation of the financial institutions as well as the availability of credit to households and companies," Sarkozy's office said Monday, but the defeat in the House of Representatives of the plan to rescue the US finance sector will add urgency to the talks.

Last week, Sarkozy had vowed that the French state would come to the aid of any financial institution at risk of failing, to ensure that depositors did not lose any of their savings.

Late Monday, the governments of France, Belgium and Luxembourg agreed in principle to inject 6.4 billion euros ($9.2 billion) into the struggling Franco-Belgian financial services group Dexia.

This week Europe has fallen deeper into the credit crunch. With multi-billion euro bailout packages, Germany, Britain and the Benelux states have saved banks from collapsing.

Hypo Real Estate, Fortis, Bradford & Bingley. Three European banks nearly collapsed in the course of just two days on Sunday and Monday, showing that the Wall Street financial crisis is pulling European companies into its pincers at an ever-faster clip. With trust between banks waning, analysts believe Europe is threatened with a serious credit crunch.

 The logos of Europe's crisis banks: The crisis is accelerating here and pulling an increasing number of institutions into its pincers. In order to protect the financial system from collapse, governments across Europe are being forced to intervene. Britain, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands all began spectacular rescues at the start of the week:

• the British government nationalized large parts of mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley on Monday, taking over some €63 billion ($90.6 billion) in bad loans;

• the governments of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands nationalized large parts of wobbling finance giant Fortis;

• in Germany, the government is providing a massive loan package together with a consortium of banks to prevent the collapse of the Munich-based Hypo Real Estate.

With the forced sale of its Netherlands activities of ABN Amro, Dutch-Belgian banking and insurance company Fortis will be back were it started. In a little over a year, Fortis has changed from a prestigious financial institution to a pariah in the banking world.

AFP

Fortis headquarters in Brussels

Over-confidence, bluff and arrogance have proved an almost fatal cocktail for Fortis which was saved from collapse by a financial injection of almost €11.2 billion on Sunday.

THE WORLD FROM BERLIN 'No More Cause for Feeling Schadenfreude'

With the government bailout of Hypo Real Estate Holding Monday, the now-global financial crisis has arrived and reared its ugly head in Germany. Commentators here largely approve of the measure, but they also want more government action -- and less anxiety -- soon.

A trader in Frankfurt watches anxiously as the effects of a government rescue plan of Hypo Real Estate affects the German market. Last Thursday, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück stood before the German parliament and tried to assure its members that "The United States is the source of the crisis, and it is the focus of the crisis." Four days later, Steinbrück launched the largest financial rescue action in postwar Germany, offering €26.6 billion ($38.3 billion) of a combined €35 billion line of credit to bailout Hypo Real Estate (HRE), the country's second-largest commercial property lender, which had considerable business in the US real estate market.

For Germans and Europeans, the crisis has arrived. On Sunday, the governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg took partial control of struggling Benelux bank Fortis. On Monday, Britain seized control of mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley, and Iceland's government took over Glitnir, the country's third-largest bank.

Governments across Europe have continued to prop up the battered financial sector, with Dexia, the Belgian-French financial services group, receiving more than $9bn from the Belgian, French and Luxembourg treasuries.

Facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, global central banks scrambled again on Tuesday to try to relieve a severe squeeze in money markets by more than doubling the amount of funding to $620 billion.

In Ireland, the government announced a blanket guarantee for savings held by its banks, covering up to $575bn in liabilities.

France, which had joined Belgium and Luxembourg in offering the lifeline to Dexia, which has run up huge losses in its US operations, said it would come to the aid of savers with new bank measures by the end of the week.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Despite Benelux governments announcing a partial nationalisation of Fortis Bank on Sunday, the ongoing financial crisis continued to collect scalps through Europe on Monday (29 September), with the UK and Germany intervening to save financial institutions. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank has announced it would lend eurozone banks €120 billion in "a special term refinancing operation."

The European Central Bank announced it would lend eurozone banks €120 billion in "a special term refinancing operation."

The decision by the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourger governments to purchase half the Belgo-Dutch banking giant for €11.2 billion represents the biggest bailout of a European bank since the beginning of the crisis.

The European Commission said on Monday it had been consulted during the negotiations and had so far no reason to believe the deal was in breach of EU competition rules.

"Up until now the national authorities in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have been listening to what the commission has been saying, so we have no reason to think that what they are going to notify the commission of is not going to be acceptable to the commission in terms of state aid rules," Jonathan Todd, a spokesperson for the institution told a press briefing in Brussels.