World Briefs

British engine maker Rolls-Royce will shed between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs worldwide next year and is already in talks to cut 140 posts in Britain, where several companies have announced job losses in recent weeks.

The company which supplies British defence, aerospace, marine and energy sectors, and employs about 39,000 people globally, said it would make the cuts in response to delays to major aerospace projects with Boeing and Airbus, as well as the wider economic downturn.

Rolls-Royce joins a growing list of major British companies to take an axe to their workforce, a trend likely to lead to a major rise in unemployment, which is already at its highest in more than 10 years.

Greek workers discover stone age homes

Archaeologists in central Greece have unearthed the remains of a Neolithic settlement discovered by workers laying a gas pipeline, the Greek Culture Ministry said yesterday. Ovens and pottery, rare decorated vases and bone tools found at the site near the city of Larissa show that its inhabitants were already skilled artisans nearly 7,000 years ago, the ministry said.

"The site was unknown until works for the installation of a natural gas pipeline started," the ministry said in a statement.

Archaeologists said the red-coloured ruins of the houses showed the settlement had burned down. The homes were made of wooden poles, branches and mud.

When they started excavating seven months ago, archaeologists also discovered 15 graves from Hellenistic times in the soil above the settlement. Last month, researchers in northern Greece unearthed the base of a 58-square-metre Neolithic house.

Readers overwhelm EU digital library

Europe's heritage went digital yesterday when the EU launched an online library putting famous works such as Dante's "Divine Comedy" and Beethoven's 9th Symphony just a mouse click away.

Europeana (www.europeana.eu) gives multilingual access to two million digitised books and other items of cultural and historical significance held in over 1,000 institutions in the 27 EU states.

"Europeana offers a journey through time, across borders, and into new ideas of what our culture is. More than that, it will connect people to their history and, through interactive pages and tools, to each other," EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement.

Soon after its launch the website froze, its servers overwhelmed by volume of 10 million hits an hour.

"It shows the huge interest of European users in this project," Ms Reding's spokesman said.

The online library plans to offer access to 10 million works by 2010. So far, just over half the 2 million items that are accessible are from France.

Germans worst pessimists in Europe

Germans are generally more pessimistic about the future than any other Europeans, according to a recent study.

The survey found only 30 per cent of Germans believe they will be better off in five years, a figure below the average across the 27 countries of the EU.

"It could be something in the German culture," Heinz-Herbert Noll, a senior researcher at Centre for Survey Research and Methodology in Mannheim, said yesterday. "We've all heard of the German 'angst', after all."

In Britain, 51 per cent were optimistic about the next five years while in Estonia the future was even brighter. They topped the table, with 65 per cent having a positive five-year outlook.

The survey of thousands of Europeans - which was conducted before the global financial crisis hit - found people in former East Germany were even more pessimistic than those in the west.

Mr Noll said even though Germany was one of Europe's more prosperous nations, people were full of doom and gloom.

Also near the bottom of the scale with large percentages of pessimists are the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria.

Relieving overcrowded jails

Bulgaria plans to free thousands of minor offenders in an attempt to relieve its overcrowded jails and ease the work of the legal system, the government said on Thursday.

Under a draft law approved by the Socialist-led government, about 3,300 inmates with light sentences or nearing the end of their terms will be released, the Cabinet said in a statement.

Criminals serving time for murder or assault will stay in jail. The amnesty also aims at marking the 130th anniversary of the Justice Ministry in 2009 and is in line with prepared amendments to the penal code, the statement said.

Human rights groups have slammed the EU newcomer for failing to bring its jails up to the bloc's standards and improve living conditions for inmates.

Some 12,000 people in the Balkan country of 7.6 million are behind bars.