Cyprus secured €10 billion in emergency loans from the eurozone's bailout fund in April to avoid bankruptcy. The deal involved the closure of the island's second biggest bank, Laiki, and a fundamental restructuring of Bank of Cyprus.

In the letter, sent to euro zone leaders earlier this month, Anastasiades did not explicitly ask for more money but indicated that the Cypriot economy could not cope unless the terms of the rescue package are altered.

The meeting is meant to take stock of results achieved so far and advance technical negotiations between the teams in Belgrade and Pristina in charge of implementing the agreement, which is part of an EU-sponsored dialogue between the two sides (see background).

After the meeting, EU Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton and Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle are to send a letter to EU countries detailing the measures taken to implement the Brussels agreement.

The plan, approved in a committee vote on Wednesday (19 June), goes much further than a proposal from the European Commission.

It seeks a gradual phase-out and ban in new equipment by 2020, and to levy a charge on the use of the gases by producers. The ban would have to be approved by a plenary session of the Parliament and by EU countries before becoming law.

The deal between representatives of EU member states and the European Parliament on a seven-year spending package was announced after many hours of haggling.

"We have concluded the negotiations,” said Irish Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore, who represented EU governments in the negotiation.

“The lead negotiator for parliament and I have agreed a package that we are both going to recommend to our respective sides," he told reporters in Brussels after more than 24 hours of talks.

With air traffic in the EU expected to grow 50% by 2030, the European Commission has waged an uphill battle to get member states to live up to their agreement to implement the Single European Sky, or SES, to make air traffic control more competitive and replace a network of national systems with regional traffic management.

To become law, the proposal to temporarily remove some of the glut of permits that has weighed on prices still needs to win backing from a plenary session of the parliament next month in Strasbourg, and from EU member states.

Traders said the market had already priced in a positive vote and allowances on the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) fell by 3.6% to €4.53 a tonne short after the vote on Wednesday (19 June).

Obesity is today a global phenomenon that affects all countries and all layers of society regardless of age, sex and income, with some health experts now referring to the pandemic as "globesity".

The Group of Eight leaders signed up for a string of aims including improved transparency about who owns shell companies and more information-sharing between tax authorities.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has sought to clamp down on secret flows of money, making it a centrepiece of his presidency of the G8 this year.

But the communiqué did not contain a firm pledge to create registers of the "beneficial" - or true - owners of companies that would be available to tax authorities and law enforcement.

Droughts, floods, heatwaves, sea-level rises and fiercer storms are likely to accompany increasing global warming and will cause severe hardship in areas that are already poor or were emerging from poverty, the bank said in the report.

Food shortages will be among the first consequences within just two decades, along with damage to cities from fiercer storms and migration as people try to escape the effects.