San Francisco  - After months of deadlock, which saw California unable to pay its bills, the largest and richest state in the US solved its budget crisis on Thursday.

The impasse, which led Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to issue layoff notices to 20,000 state workers and order a halt in all public works projects, was broken after he succeeded in persuading a Republican legislator to back the spending plan despite strong opposition from their rightwing party.

London  - World Bank chief Robert Zoellick has urged the European Union (EU) to lead efforts to increase global support for the ailing economies of central and eastern Europe in order to avoid a new "split" 20 years after the fall of communism.

In an interview published in the London Financial Times Thursday, Zoellick said the World Bank was trying to work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other multilateral institutions to help the region but needed more backing from Brussels.

Tokyo - Japan's central bank on Thursday decided to keep the short-term interest rate unchanged at 0.1 per cent as the nation suffers through the worst recession in its postwar era.

The Bank of Japan's policy board voted unanimously to forego an rate hike at the end of a two-day meeting after it lowered the rate from 0.3 per cent in December.

Detroit  - General Motors (GM) has to date not made any decisions to close Opel auto works in Germany, the governor of the German province North Rhine Westphalia said Wednesday in Detroit.

Juergen Ruettgers, the top official in the province, talked to reporters after meeting in Detroit with Rick Wagoner, head of the beleaguered General Motors which owns the Opel line.

"We are so relieved," Ruettgers said. "There is no decision to close auto works in Germany, also not in Bochum."

Amsterdam  - Dutch bank and insurance company ING Group suffered a loss of 3.7 billion euros (4.67 billion dollars) in 2008, the company said in its final Q4 report published on Wednesday.

Last year in the same period, ING still made a profit of 2.4 billion euros.

Net loss for all of 2008 amounted to 729 million euros, compared with a net profit of 9.2 billion euros for 2007.

Bangkok  - Failing US automotive giant General Motors laid off 790 of its 3,000 labour force in Thailand, where orders for its vehicles plummeted 56 per cent last month, media reports said Wednesday.

The axing of 790 jobs followed GM Thailand's closure of its local assembly plant for two months to avoid an inventory buildup as export orders fell off.

GM is one of 15 international automobile makers with assembly and manufacturing plants in Thailand to supply the domestic and export markets.