Washington  - President Barack Obama met top congressional leaders and economic officials from his administration Wednesday to take the "critical first step" in overhauling a financial regulatory system that has shared blame for the devastating credit crisis.

Obama called for "serious oversight" of the country's biggest financial institutions in future but said there was no intention to stifle market activity.

He said legislation would be drawn up in the coming weeks and months to pull the US agencies out of a "20th century" regulatory structure and prevent another crisis of similar magnitude.

Berlin  - Germany's postal delivery company Deutsche Post has been hit by losses of 1.69 billion euros (2.16 billion dollars) for 2008, the company reported Wednesday.

This is the first time the company has posted an overall loss since the privatisation of Germany's postal industry in 1995.

The high losses were largely a result of the company's loss-making US business arm, as well as deficits at the company's Postbank subsidiary.

Washington  - US central bank head Ben Bernanke on Wednesday rejected the idea that the government plans to nationalize major US banks in danger of collapse, during a second day of testimony before legislators.

The Federal Reserve chairman insisted that President Barack Obama's administration preferred to use public-private partnerships, which were temporary in nature and involved taking only a portion of banks' shares in exchange for emergency government funds.

Islamabad  - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed to approve a second tranche of 800 million dollars of its 7.6-billon- dollar program to save Pakistan from defaulting on external payments, a senior official said on Wednesday.

"The Executive Board of the IMF will approve the second tranche for Pakistan by the end of March 2009," Pakistan's Finance Secretary Waqar Masood told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa from Dubai, where the sides concluded the talks.

Brussels  - European Union efforts to revive "zombie banks" poisoned by toxic assets and to jointly supervise the bloc's troubled financial sector gained momentum Wednesday as experts in Brussels issued a series of recommendations to member states.

But those pushing for the swift creation of a pan-European supervisory body were set for disappointment, with officials saying such an option was currently "unrealistic".

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P's) on Tuesday lowered the outlook on India's sovereign rating from 'stable' to 'negative', citing a deteriorating fiscal situation. 

With "high government debt burden and deficits", India's "weak fiscal profile" has been the single "largest negative factor" for the sovereign ratings on India, it added. In the interim budget unveiled by Pranab Mukherjee on February 16, the government disclosed that the fiscal deficit - the gap between revenues and expenditure - had risen to 6% of GDP from the 2.5% projected in February, 2008. And this figure excludes the off-budget subsidies of Rs 95,942 crore for oil and fertiliser companies.