Lithuania set for energy rethink

Lithuania's president-elect says she will push to open up the Baltic state's energy sector, which is still linked to the Soviet-era power grid.

Dalia Grybauskaite achieved an election landslide on Sunday to become Lithuania's first female president. "There is no internal market with electricity - it's very monopolised," Ms Grybauskaite told the BBC.
Asked about relations with Russia, she said she would "keep irritating rhetoric out of my language". Lithuania gets more than 80% of its gas and most of its oil from Russia.

Like its Baltic neighbours, Lithuania has been hit hard by the global economic downturn. Its economy is expected to contract by as much as 15% this year and in January frustration over the crisis escalated into rioting. "I hope to be a stabiliser in this situation," said the president-elect, who will have the right to veto the budget if she so chooses.

Ms Grybauskaite is poised to step down as the European Union's budget commissioner before taking up the presidency.

BBC

Pirates coordinating attacks off Somalia

Searches of captured mother ships operating off the Somali coast have revealed for the first time that pirate gangs are coordinating their attacks against commercial shipping, the commander of the European Union's naval task force said Wednesday. British Rear Admiral Philip Jones said that in recent weeks his flotilla had captured four of the mother ships used to resupply the small pirate speedboats that operate far offshore in the Indian Ocean.

"We do fairly extensive trawls of all the vessels we capture to look for ... evidence we can use to work (out) ourselves what the pirates tactics are," Jones told reporters. The most recent evidence, he said, shows the mother ships are telling each other about potential targets.

The EU flotilla's primary task is escorting ships chartered by the World Food Program to carry food aid to Somalia. In the five months it has been deployed, the flotilla's warships have escorted 23 vessels that have delivered enough food to feed 1.5 million people in the war-ravaged nation. Despite the international naval presence, attacks on commercial shipping off the Somali coast have exploded in the last two months as the pirates have taken to sailing far out into the Indian Ocean to attack vessels beyond the patrol range of the warships.

Jones said he was "bemused" by media reports that the pirates were receiving intelligence on the movement of commercial shipping from sources in the West, adding that the searches of the mother ships had yielded no such evidence.

AP

EU signs deal on new gas pipeline

The European Union has signed an agreement with four countries in a bid to press ahead with a gas pipeline that would reduce its reliance on Russian energy.
Azerbaijan and Egypt, which can both supply gas, and Turkey and Georgia, which are able to carry it, signed up to the Nabucco gas pipeline scheme on Friday at a meeting in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. In return for their commitment to supply gas to Europe, the EU offered to provide more trade and stronger transport links to the gas producers and transit countries involved.
Three key nations - Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - refused to sign the text, diplomatic sources told the AFP news agency.
Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, said the aim to open up a "southern corridor" for supplies was "not just a one-way street for pipelines." He said: "We envisage this as a new silk road where we'll see the flow of information, goods, people and energy in both ways."
AlJazeera

ECB package

The European central bank announced a multi-pronged attack on the recession on Thursday (7 May), cutting interest rates by a quarter point and unveiling plans to buy €60 billion worth of bonds held by euro area banks.
But the bank's president, Jean-Claude Trichet, was adamant that the innovative move to buy covered bonds did not constitute quantitative easing, saying the exact details on how the bank will raise the money will be announced next month. Covered bonds have traditionally been considered some of the safest corporate bonds on the market as they are backed by mortgages or public sector loans.
Independently on Thursday, the Bank of England announced it would pump a further €56 billion into the British economy through the purchase of government and corporate bonds. British interest rates remained unchanged however.
The ECB's quarter point interest rates cut bringing the bank's main lending rate to an historic low of just 1 percent. After the news was announced, many commercial banks around the euro area said they would pass the cut onto holders of tracker mortgages, helping reducing monthly mortgage repayments. Others however said they would not be passing the cut on, claiming instead that they wished to protect individuals opting to save.
Showing new signs of flexibility, Mr Trichet did not rule out the possibility of a further interest rate cut, marking a departure from previous statements in which he indicated 1 percent was the lowest the bank would go. While euro area rates have reached a new record low, they are still higher than those in the US which currently hover in a band between 0 - 0.25 percent. Both Britain and Japan also have lower rates on 0.5 percent and 0.1 percent respectively.
In a further measure, the ECB announced it would extend its lending period to banks from 6 to 12 months and would starting lending to the European Investment Bank for the first time. The European Investment Bank was set up by the 1958 Treaty of Rome, with the aim of lending money of support EU policy objectives especially the financing of projects in poorer regions. The news should bring some cheer to Eastern Europe that has been particularly badly hit by the crisis.
The comprehensive package of measures announced on Thursday is more than many analysts had anticipated and reflect the ECB's gloomy assessment of the current economic situation. Mr Trichet said the first quarter of 2009 had been "very bad" and that the bank would revise down it growth forecasts next month.
Eurobserver