Brussels  - The European Union on Wednesday called on member states to help the bloc avoid a deep recession by mobilizing 200 billion euros (260 billion dollars) in extra spending and tax cuts.

"Exceptional times call for exceptional measures," said the head of the EU's executive, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso.

"Our plan will boost demand and thus save and create millions of jobs," he said.

According to the head of the EU executive, the bulk of the money - 170 billion euros - should come from national governments, with the remaining 30 billion being made available by the European Commission and the Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank (EIB).

Washington  - US president-elect Barack Obama announced Wednesday that he was establishing an advisory board to help lead the country out of the economic crisis and named a former chairman of the Federal Reserve to head it.

Paul Volcker will head the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which will be tasked with coming up with ideas for creating jobs and stabilizing the financial system, Obama said. The board will offer independent and non-partisan analysis of the economic crisis and formulate ideas for reversing the trend.

Singapore  - Singapore's October manufacturing output declined 12.6 per cent compared with the same month last year due to a drop in regional demand, the Singapore Economic Development Board said Wednesday.

The export-oriented petroleum, petrochemical, precision engineering, consumer electronics and semi-conductor industries reported a drop in demand, it said.

The transport engineering, marine & offshore engineering and aerospace segments reported growth in demand, including ongoing contracts.

On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, October output shrank 12.7 per cent over September, the board said.

Buenos Aires  - In a move to confront the growing threat of recession, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner Tuesday announced a 21.5-billion-dollar (71-billion-peso) programme to create jobs in the construction industry.

The aim is to expand the number of jobs in the sector from 362,000 to 770,000, Kirchner said at the annual meeting of the building industry in Buenos Aires.

Details of the programme are to be unveiled on December 15.

Geneva - The International Labour Organisation (ILO) warned Tuesday that millions of workers worldwide would likely see an erosion of their wages in 2009 due to the global financial crisis.

In industrialized countries, wages would likely decline by 0.5 per cent. That compares to growth of 0.8 per cent in 2008.

Adding to the bad news, the ILO reported that wages fall at a faster rate than gross domestic product (GDP) contraction in bad economic years, but grow at a slower rate than GDP in good years. Indeed, for every 1 percentage point of GDP growth, salaries only increased by 0.75 percentage point.

New York - US markets got a slight boost from government plans announced Tuesday to pump an additional 800 billion dollars into the struggling economy and unfreeze credit for consumers and small businesses.

The increases continued a three-day rally on Wall Street. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 36.06 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 8,479.47. The broad-based Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 5.58, or 0.7 per cent, to 857.39, while the technology heavy Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 7.29 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 1,464.73.