European leaders agree to £12bn financial crisis rescue package

Gordon Brown has won heavyweight European backing for a £12 billion immediate rescue package for small businesses in peril because of the credit crunch.

The plan to set up a small businesses fund across Europe was supported by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi at an emergency European Union summit in Paris

The meeting, to discuss urgent solutions to the economic crisis, saw leaders also look for ways to stop European countries acting unilaterally to guarantee bank deposits, thereby hitting their neighbours’ economies.

The meeting of the four EU nations belonging to the G8 group of industrialised countries — France, Germany, the UK and Italy — as well as the head of the European Central Bank and the president of the European Commission was called by Mr Sarkozy, the French president, who holds the EU presidency.



Suspected Al Qaeda Mastermind Behind Baghdad Bombings Killed


BAGHDAD — The U.S. military says it has killed a senior Al Qaeda in Iraq leader suspected of masterminding deadly bombings in Baghdad.

The military says U.S. troops acting in self-defense also killed his wife in Friday's firefight.

Saturday's statement identifies the man killed as Mahir Ahmad Mahmud Judu' al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Assad or Abu Rami.




Zimbabwe on the brink of new crisis as food runs out

Six months after the elections, Zimbabwe still lacks a functioning government and is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Following the worst wheat harvest since the independence war, bread has run out and sugar supplies are set to follow. USAid, the American government humanitarian agency, is warning that the country could run out of the maize, the staple food, by next month. Farming officials say the government's stated aim of producing maize on 500,000 hectares this season is unattainable.

'We are in serious trouble,' said Jabulani Gwaringa, of the Zimbabwe Farmers' Union (ZFU), which represents small-scale operators. 'There is no seed, fertiliser and crop chemicals on the market. Banks are not offering farmers any credit. In July we had produced about 25,000 metric tons of seed maize. We are down to 9,000 because farmers opted to eat their hybrid seed or sell it to millers.'