- Belgium's debt reaches 100% of annual national income

- Portuguese and Spanish borrowing costs rise sharply

- Standard & Poor's reduces Ireland's credit rating to A

- Eire PM resists EU pressure to raise corporation tax

- Irish families each face 4,600 euro bailout bill

- European Finance chief: 'There is zero danger. It's inconceivable that the euro would collapse'

The rising cost of Belgium's debt is now 100 per cent of annual national income. That is raising concerns the country could join Portugal, Spain and Italy on the growing list of countries that could be heading for a financial crisis along with stricken Ireland.

The eurozone was dealt a further blow yesterday after Portuguese and Spanish borrowing costs rose sharply as investors worried that their debt levels will prove unsustainable, putting them next in line for a European bailout.

Portugal and Spain are viewed as the 16-nation eurozone's next weakest links now that Ireland has followed Greece and accepted a massive international rescue package. As a major public sector strike in Portugal further undermined market confidence there, the interest rate on the government's 10-year bonds broke through the 7 per cent barrier yesterday. The 10-year Spanish bonds rose to 5.08 per cent from 4.91 per cent at the start of trading.

While both countries are not at any immediate risk of bankruptcy, those rates are making their already heavy debt loads more expensive to finance. The higher cost to roll over debt is eating away at any progress the governments make in their public finances through austerity measures. Traders are also worried Belgium's broken political system, which has left it without a government since April, is distracting it from tackling its worsening economic outlook.

No more tariffs. No more visas. Vastly more economic cooperation between Russia and the European Union. That's the vision presented by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an editorial contribution to the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday.

"We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros."

The proposal comes as Putin travels to Germany on Thursday for a two-day visit, including a Friday meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. On Wednesday, Russia and the EU reached an important agreement on the elimination of tariffs on raw materials such as wood. The deal was an important prerequisite for the EU dropping its opposition to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization. Moscow is hoping to become a member in 2011.

Putin, though, as his Thursday proposal makes clear, envisions more. "The current state of cooperation between Russia and the EU is not consistent with the challenges that we face," he writes. "To transform the situation, we need to take advantage of the advantages which already exist and the possibilities for progress in the EU and Russia."

Or should they find something sinister in the new full-body screening machines and pat-down procedures which are making air travel here an ever less joyful experience? At the heart of the debate are conflicting impulses within the American soul towards state authority.

Here in the US, there is a nearly universal patriotic regard for any uniformed defender of the land. But it co-exists with a deep-seated suspicion of any expansion of the rights of the authorities over the rights of the individual citizen. Most Americans have a healthy scepticism towards centralised authority which one does not generally find in Europeans. In extreme cases that suspicion can develop into the view that government is a kind of larcenous conspiracy against the people. Hence the passions aroused by changes in the way air passengers are screened as they pass through American airports.

The procedure is pretty intimate - there would be no point to it if it wasn't - but it has incensed some travellers who see the firm patting down of thighs, buttocks and breasts as a process which would be considered sexual assault in any other circumstances.

Some critics believe all the airport screening is part of a kind of "theatre of security" which is designed to reassure the public but wouldn't actually deter a sophisticated terrorist. The hijackers of United Flight 93, the shoe-bomber and the Christmas Day attacker were all thwarted by brave and vigilant fellow passengers runs this argument, not by the authorities.

According to the latest IFO survey, published on Wednesday, business confidence in Germany is at its highest level since the reunification boom of the early 1990s. Unemployment is back below pre-crisis levels, consumers are out shopping again, investment is soaring, and the government's finances are heading back towards surplus.

Lord Young's howler in pronouncing that we've never had it so good would actually have had some veracity if directed at Germany rather than Britain. For most Germans, the crisis in the eurozone is just a humiliating irritant, and would indeed be something of an irrelevance were it not for the disrepute it heaps on their currency and the anger felt at being forced to bail out the profligate fringe.

Newly emboldened by what one minister has termed Germany's "golden autumn", the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has hardened her rhetoric over the past month. An increasingly uncompromising approach to the future of the euro area is being adopted.

Lump it or leave it, has become the German approach; live with teutonic economic and financial disciplines or get out. You kind of wonder whether there is any point to the single currency if all notion of joint and several liability is abandoned, and it becomes in effect just a way of pegging other currencies to the D-mark, but that's where we seem to be heading.

Credit default swaps on Spanish five-year bonds surged to an all-time high of 312 basis points, and reached 510 on Portuguese bonds, after Frankfurter Allgemeine cited a confidential report by the German finance ministry suggesting that Berlin aims to confront creditors with the risk of serious losses two years earlier than feared.

Jurgen Michels from Citigroup said Germany's haircut proposals would make it much harder for struggling Club Med states to raise money, risking a self-fulfilling crisis. "Portugal and Spain would be probably forced to tap the current European Financial Stability Facility, which could bring the facility to its limit and even exceed it," he warned.

Mr Michels said the results would be so destructive that Germany is unlikely to win EU backing for the idea. However, Chancellor Angela Merkel has already announced that she will "not back down" on demands for creditor pain. In an odd statement this week she said investors had made money "speculating on the bankruptcy of countries" and must now share the burden of rescue costs.

Greg Gibbs from RBS [government-backed Royal Bank of Scotland in the UK] said the European Central Bank (ECB) had helped cause the latest eurozone eruption by draining liquidity too soon and signalling that it aimed to end the "addiction" of struggling Irish and Club Med banks to its cheap funding window sooner rather than later.

"This tough stance is reigniting a eurozone debt crisis. The ECB needs to rethink its plans," he said. The RBS team said the central bank should dramatically increase its purchase of eurozone debt, especially Spanish debt, starting with 100 billion euros sovereign and corporate bonds.

The US military command in Seoul announced that the carrier will take part in exercises in "waters west of the Korean peninsula" from November 28 to December 1. "This exercise is defensive in nature," the statement said. "While planned well before yesterday's unprovoked artillery attack, it demonstrates the strength of the [South Korea]-US alliance and our commitment to regional stability through deterrence."

The maneuvers also will seek to improve the interoperability of US and South Korean naval forces, the statement said. The dispatch of the carrier to the Yellow Sea was postponed during earlier anti-submarine warfare exercises amid complaints from Chinese military officials that a carrier in the sea threatened China because US warplanes from the ship could reach targets in China.

Chinese Major General Zhu Chenghu told state-run media in July that "if the United States truly wants to take into account the overall interests of the Sino-US relationship, then it must on no account send its USS Washington to the Yellow Sea." He called the area "sensitive." The Pentagon rejected the Chinese criticism and said US Navy ships, including carriers, will transit the Yellow Sea because it is in international waters.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters last month that "there has been an assertion that we, the US, shouldn't operate in the Yellow Sea. That is international waters. We're going to operate in the Yellow Sea. We and others." The ships scheduled to take part in the exercise in addition to the George Washington include the missile-armed warships USS Cowpens, USS Shiloh, USS Stethem and USS Fitzgerald.

Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies. "About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies," Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St Petersburg.

The two countries were accustomed to using other currencies, especially the dollar, for bilateral trade. Since the financial crisis, however, high-ranking officials on both sides began to explore other possibilities. The yuan has now started trading against the Russian rouble in the Chinese interbank market, while the renminbi will soon be allowed to trade against the rouble in Russia, Putin said.

"That has forged an important step in bilateral trade and it is a result of the consolidated financial systems of world countries," he said. Putin made his remarks after a meeting with Wen. They also officiated at a signing ceremony for 12 documents, including energy cooperation. The documents covered cooperation on aviation, railroad construction, customs, protecting intellectual property, culture and a joint communique. Details of the documents have yet to be released.

Mr Bloom told the BBC he stood by his words, describing the leader of the socialist group in the parliament, as "a national socialist". Mr Bloom made the comments as Mr Schulz, a member of Germany's Social Democratic Party and leader of the socialist bloc in the Parliament, was speaking during a debate on the economic crisis in the Irish Republic.

President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek told him: "As you know, most of the members of the chamber cannot accept your behaviour. I will therefore ask you to leave the chamber at this point." The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Strasbourg said Mr Bloom was likely to face disciplinary measures following his outburst.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage was, himself, disciplined by the European Parliament earlier this year after saying the president of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, had "the charisma of a damp rag". After refusing to retract the comments, Mr Farage was fined 2,700 pounds by the parliamentary authorities.

There have been clashes as police try to contain surges from demonstrators. There have been occupations at many universities across the country - including Oxford University's Bodleian Library. Students are staging occupations at universities including Royal Holloway, Plymouth, Birmingham, London South Bank, UCL, Essex and UWE Bristol.

Marches, walkouts and protest events are also taking place at universities and colleges in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bristol, Southampton, Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, Newcastle, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Glasgow and Edinburgh. School pupils have walked out of lessons in Winchester, Cambridge, Leeds and London.

Students are protesting against plans to increase tuition fees in England to 9,000 pounds per year and to withdraw public funding for university teaching budgets for many subjects. An anarchist group had called for "roaming marches" to "disrupt business" across central London, rather than a static stand-off with police.

Figures also show the number of underage girls becoming pregnant has remained almost constant since 1998, despite millions being spent on government initiatives to promote safe sex and contraception. Campaigners described the rising rate of abortion as a 'tragedy' and said they were now being used as the principal method of reducing teenage pregnancies.

The latest figures from the ONS show 62 per cent of pregnancies among girls under 16 ended in abortion in 2008, compared to just over half in 1998. Almost half of those under 18 have a termination, a rise of almost a fifth compared to a decade ago.

The trend follows a damning report published last year which showed Britain had become the abortion capital of Europe, overtaking France for the first time. There were 219,336 terminations carried out in 2007, compared to 209,699 in France, 150,000 in Romania, and 127,000 in Italy. Phyllis Bowman, of the anti-abortion campaign group Right to Life, said: 'The Government is simply encouraging sexual activity with its safe sex message.'

Following Ireland's request for billions in aid from the European Union rescue fund, calls for the stricken EU member state to raise its corporate tax rate are increasing in Germany. In continental Europe, many countries have long been miffed by Ireland's 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, which is less than half that levied by many other EU countries, including Germany. They argue that it leads to an exodus of jobs to Ireland and represents unfair competition. In an interview with Germany's tabloid daily Bild published on Tuesday, however, Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan rejected those demands.

Lenihan also disputed arguments that Ireland had been the subject of "direct or indirect" pressure from the EU over his country's low corporate tax rate. He said his country was competing with the Far East rather than other EU countries for much of its foreign direct investment. In Brussels, officials assume that, in addition to making painful cuts in its budget, Ireland will also be unable to avoid raising taxes. "It is probable that Ireland will not continue to be a low-tax country," a spokesman for EU Economics Commissioner Olli Rehn said.

Given that Germany will have to provide a considerable part of Ireland's credit guarantees, criticism amongst politicians in the country over the Irish taxation system is growing. "It cannot be that the companies and residents in Ireland pay lower taxes than companies and residents in the countries that are providing the aid," Hartmut Mollring, the finance minister for the state of Lower Saxony, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union party, told the Braunschwieger Zeitung newspaper. "Irish taxes must at least be average or a little bit above."

"The current annoyance by the Americans and the French at the success of German exports is just a foretaste of the hostilities towards Germany that would be unleashed. One against the rest: That's something that this country cannot sustain - neither economically, not to mention politically."

Nine years after the arrival of foreign forces, the Pentagon said all types of violent incidents in Afghanistan had increased from April through the end of September, up 300 percent from 2007, except for the use of roadside bombs. The White House will reveal in coming weeks its review of the war a year after President Barack Obama unveiled a new strategy for the flagging, unpopular campaign in Afghanistan.

Even as the Pentagon's latest congressionally mandated report painted a grim picture of the situation in Afghanistan, where corruption undermines the fight against the Taliban and only halting, uneven improvements to Afghans' lives have been achieved, US officials said there were signs of progress. Increased troop levels have bolstered security in some areas in the past six weeks, a period not captured in the twice-annual report, officials said, and foreign troops have managed to push Taliban violence back from cities and towns.

"But this progress is fragile - this is a very tough fight," a senior State Department official told reporters on condition of anonymity. Yet some onlookers are skeptical even a far-off goal of putting Afghan forces in the lead in 2014 can be reached, as foreign forces struggle to train and fortify local police and soldiers and bring about a modicum of self-governance and growth in one of the world's poorest countries.

If talks remain at an impasse, the budget will remain frozen at current levels, something that many MEPs say could call into question future funding for organisations such as the External Action Service and the ITER nuclear reactor. Leader of the Social-democrat group Martin Schultz said the breakdown in talks were "turning democracy on its head", saying it was not for national governments to block the will of parliament.

Parliament negotiators have said they are willing to accept the EU governments' wish for a 2.9% budget increase - lower than the 6% that the parliament had voted for. But MEPs want their role in setting future EU budgets to be clarified. The European Commission drafts the budget, but that is only the first stage in a long negotiating process. The Commission, like the parliament, wanted the budget increase to be 6%.

The attack near a disputed sea border was also denounced by Russia, Japan and the European Union. South Korea returned fire and threatened missile strikes if there were "further provocations". President Obama described South Korea as an important ally and "a cornerstone of US security in the Pacific region". He said: "We strongly affirm our commitment to defend South Korea as part of that alliance.

"We want to make sure all the parties in the region recognise that this is a serious and ongoing threat that needs to be dealt with." He called on North Korea's ally China to communicate to Pyongyang "that there are a set of international rules they need to abide by". In a telephone conversation, Mr Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak agreed to hold combined military exercises in the days ahead to underscore the strength of their alliance, the White House said in a statement. The US has 28,000 troops stationed in the South.

Russia's foreign minister warned of a "colossal danger", and said those behind the attack carried a huge responsibility. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he had ordered ministers to "make preparations so that we can react firmly, should any unexpected event occur". The EU and the UK also condemned the North, but China - the North's main ally - refused to apportion blame.

The budget aims to quell international ease over Portugal's public spending and deficit. For the first time in 20 years, the country's main unions UGT and CGTP have united in a call for a national day of industrial action. They expect workers from the private and public sector to take part in the strike, the head of the CGTP, Manuel Carvalho da Silva, said. "The mobilisation of workers is enormous," he added.

The strike will hit banks, media and petrol supplies, the unions say. They also aim to paralyse the country's ports, and hundreds of flights are set to be cancelled. Many Portuguese have been angered by the government's plans to cut wages for public sector workers, freeze pensions and increase taxes.

However, analysts say the walkout is unlikely to stop the passage of the austerity budget, given that the opposition Social Democratic Party (PSD) has said that in order to not jeopardise the country's fragile finances it will abstain from the vote on Friday rather than vote against the measures. With 80% of its public debt held abroad, the country now finds itself at the mercy of bond traders and wants to convince the markets that it will be able to meet its commitments, our correspondent says.