Reykjavik  - Iceland was set to keep its increased whaling quota for the coming year, Fisheries Minister Steingrimur J Sigfusson said Wednesday.

The raised annual quota of 150 fin whales and 100 minke whales was announced at the end of January shortly before former Fisheries Minister Einar K Gudfinnsson left office.

Sigfusson added that it was not certain that Iceland would keep the quota for the coming five years as his predecessor had suggested.

Warsaw  - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday the government would intervene if the country's currency drops to 5 zloty against the euro, and would then sell euros on the market.

The announcement came after the zloty dropped to historic lows on Monday, when it traded at 4.77 against the euro. It dipped further on Tuesday, when at times it traded at
4.94 against the euro.

Washington  - The centrepiece of Barack Obama's economic rescue plans will become law Tuesday, the culmination of a six-week process full of partisan wrangling that handed the US president his first significant victory since inauguration.

Obama is to sign a 787-billion-dollar economic stimulus bill at a ceremony in Denver, Colorado. The largest single spending measure in US history is intended to help the country recover from a year-long recession that many consider the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Budapest  - Hungary's socialist government presented a new tax package to parliament on Monday which it hopes will make the country one of the most competitive in the region.

Corporate tax will be raised from 16 to 19 per cent, but because a "solidarity" tax on company profit will be scrapped, the de facto rate will fall from 20 to 9 per cent.

Prague - The Czech Republic's centre-right government Monday approved a set of fiscal measures aimed at softening the economic slump's effects on the country's export-driven economy.

Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek told a news conference that the package and earlier pro-export measures adopted in late 2008 would cost taxpayers 1.9 per cent of gross domestic product, or some 70 billion koruny (3 billion dollars).

The premier said that the plan counts on a prediction that the country's economy would contract by 1 per cent.

Warsaw - Poland's National Bank warned on Monday against moving closer to adopting the euro, saying that at present there were few economic reasons to enter the precursory stage for adopting the euro.

It was "highly uncertain" that Poland could meet the criteria to stay in ERM-2, a pre-cursor program to joining the eurozone, said the report, released on Monday.

A qualifying country is required to spend at least two years in ERM-2 and run a budget deficit at no more than 3 per cent of the GDP.