Budapest - Clothing giant Levi-Strauss confirmed on Friday that it will close its Hungarian plant by the end of June with the loss of 549 jobs.

The factory in the small southern town of Kiskunhalas has been turning out the company's iconic denim jeans since 1988, when Hungary was still a communist state.

The US clothing company told the local news agency MTI that it had agreed a severance package with its Hungarian workers.

Over 30,000 jobs have been lost in Hungary since the effects of the global financial crisis hit the country hard last October.

London  - The first giant tanker carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar arrived in Britain Friday amid noisy protests from campaigners who oppose the project on environmental and safety grounds.

The consignment, on board the 316,000-ton Tembek, is the first to be delivered to the deep sea port of Milford Haven, on the coast of Wales in south-west Britain, under a long-term contract signed with Qatar.

Washington - Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke Friday was optimistic about the market's responses to a series of crisis measures undertaken by the central bank to stem the financial crisis.

"So far, we have generally been encouraged by the market responses, including the decline in mortgage interest rates," Bernanke said in speech to community bankers in Phoenix, Arizona.

London - British police face an "unprecedented challenge" from protest groups planning to disrupt the summit of Group of 20 (G20) leaders in London early next month, the officer in charge said Friday.

Commander Bob Broadhurst said 2,500 officers would be deployed to stop environmental and anarchist protestors from bringing the centre of London to a "standstill," as they had vowed to do.

The police operation was expected to cost up to 10 million pounds (14.4 million dollars), he predicted.

Kampala  - Uganda said Friday that it is being hit by the global economic crisis and has lost an equivalent of 90 million US dollars in direct foreign investment since the financial slump began.

"The global economic crisis is drastically affecting developing countries and we are getting affected because we are part of the global village," Aston Kajara, deputy finance minister in charge of investment told reporters.

Geneva  - Africa is not immune to the world's financial troubles, the head of the African Development Bank said Friday, asking that at the upcoming G20 international economic conference the continent not be forgotten.

"For us, in the low income countries, the crisis is reaching us and hitting very hard," Donald Kaberuka, the bank's president, said.

The continent was witnessing contractions in all major sectors "much faster than we thought."