Brussels - The head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, on Thursday hailed the US Senate's approval of a 700-billion-dollar rescue plan for the financial sector, calling the vote a "step in the right direction."

Barroso is "delighted by the adoption of the Paulson plan," which is a "step in the right direction," his spokesman, Johannes Laitenberger, told journalists in Brussels.

"We need to inject confidence into the markets at the moment ... We hope that other steps will follow," Laitenberger said.

Brussels - The European Commission on Wednesday gave the green light to the purchase by Germany's Deutsche Bank of parts of Dutch ABN Amro from troubled Benelux giant Fortis, judging that it would not harm competition in Europe.

The decision comes a year after the commission ruled that Fortis could buy up parts of ABN Amro as long as it sold off certain key ventures, and three months after Deutsche bid some 709 million euros (1 billion dollars) for the parts.

But it comes too late to save Fortis, which the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments part-privatized at the weekend in a bid to save it from a collapse triggered by the global financial crisis.

Brussels - Belgium paid its final respects Wednesday to the last survivor of a resistance team that in 1943 pulled off a daring raid, rescuing over 200 Jews from a train to Auschwitz with no more than a pistol, three pairs of wirecutters, a lantern and a red rag.

Robert Maistriau, who died on Friday aged 87, was 22 years old when he and two friends took the risk of hijacking a train deporting over 1,600 Jews from Belgium to the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in Poland.

Brussels  - Support for the idea of transferring 1 billion euros (1.43 billion dollars) out of the European Union's farming budget to support poor farmers in Africa is growing, the head of the EU's executive, Jose Manuel Barroso, said Wednesday.

It is "crucial that EU member states and the European Parliament support the proposal to create a Food Facility of 1 billion euros to support agricultural production. ... This approach won unanimous approval in the UN and the World Bank, (and) I am delighted to have the support of the French presidency" of the EU, Barroso said.

Brussels - The European Commission on Wednesday imposed a fine of nearly 1 billion dollars on nine business groups, including ExxonMobil and Total, it found guilty of fixing prices and market shares for paraffin wax.

The 676-million-euro (966-million-dollar) fine is the fourth-largest cartel punishment in EU history, and covers a cartel which ran for 13 years and which participants called the "paraffin mafia."

Brussels  - The European Union on Wednesday launched a probe into the five-billion-euro German state aid package granted to troubled bank WestLB, but said that the probe did not necessarily indicate any suspicion of wrongdoing, officials said in a statement.

The EU's executive, the European Commission, has opened "an in- depth investigation into state support measures in favour of the German bank WestLB. This is a first step towards finding a viable long-term solution, in close contact with the German authorities," a statement released in Brussels said.