Singapore - Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the city state has to prepare for tough times ahead and some years of slower economic growth in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

"So let us prepare for a very tough year ahead, and let us be psychologically ready to think of several slow years after that," media reports quoted Lee as saying at a meeting on Sunday with unionists and employers.

Prague  - The Czech Republic's budget gap is likely to exceed 4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009, a Finance Ministry official said Sunday.

"I do not believe that the deficit of public finances would ... be lower than 4 per cent," Deputy Finance Minister Eduard Janota said in a television debate.

Such a deficit would mar prospects for a speedy adoption of the euro, as the European Union requires candidates to keep their fiscal gaps under 3 per cent of GDP.

Phuket, Thailand  - Finance ministers from South-east and East Asia met Sunday on the Thai tourist island of Phuket to try to come up with joint measures to tackle the effects on the region of the global economic slide.

Although institutional investors in East Asia generally stayed away from the kind of financial instruments that led to the current economic crisis in the West, the countries of the region have already experienced dramatic falls in volumes of exports to the West, with further drops expected.

Berlin - European Union (EU) leaders and finance ministers meet in Berlin Sunday to draw up an action plan aimed at combating the world economic crisis amid fears that financial pressures were intensifying across the EU and Eastern Europe.

Hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Sunday's meeting has been called to set out Europe's position on financial market reform and tackling the recession ahead of the April summit in London of the Group of 20 (G20) major economic powers.

Islamabad, Feb. 21 : The ghost of huge financial mismanagement during General Pervez Musharraf's regime is out again to haunt the former President and his close associates.

The Pakistan's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has decided to constitute a sub-committee to investigate how 179 million rupees was spent by the Ministry of Culture on the verbal orders of Musharraf in 2005.

The sub-committee would be headed by Nadeem Afzal Chann, and would report back to the PAC with its findings after a month, The Dawn reports.

San Francisco  - Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday signed a 130-billion-dollar budget including tax increases and spending cuts into law, ending a four-month crisis in California.

The largest and richest state in the US was in a deadlock, which saw it unable to pay its bills. Lawmakers finally passed the bill Thursday.