Russian President Vladimir Putin says his country will aim its rockets at European targets if the United States goes ahead with plans to build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

PMI Mortgage Insurance Company Limited (PMI Europe), the AA rated European mortgage insurance and credit enhancement subsidiary of The PMI Group, Inc. (NYSE: PMI), announced the appointment of Beatriz Calvo as Country Manager for Spain today, as it prepares to enter this key European market.

Russian oil to be transported to southeastern Europe after Bulgaria's parliament ratified Wednesday a trilateral agreement for the construction and exploitation of a pipeline.

Valery Golubev, the deputy chairman of Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom's Management Committee, said in April that the price of gas charged by Gazprom to Ukraine will depend on how closely the economies of both countries are prepared to cooperate, the Ukrainian website proUA.com reported.

Recently Ilham Aliev made warlike statements in Baku saying that they had got some military techniques, thus, frustrating the military balance in the region. The Armenian part keeps silence, even when Robert Simmon, the Special Representative of NATO Secretary General in the South Caucasus, announced that Azerbaijan violated the OSCE agreement on "Convention of Ordinary Offence Armaments Reduction in Europe".

Russia has requested an emergency conference to discuss the Conventional Forces In Europe (CFE) Treaty. The Foreign Ministry said that Russia has approached the Netherlands, the depositary of the treaty, with a request to call an emergency conference on June 12-15 in Vienna.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says consultations with the United States have failed to change Moscow's opposition to a proposed missile-defense system in Europe.

Europe will in future make more use of space activities in order to reach its political objectives. For this purpose, 29 European countries adopted on May 22nd a resolution on the European Space Policy on the occasion of the 4th Space Council.

The Bologna Process of integrating higher education in Europe is unlikely to achieve its aims by its target date of 2010, a leading academic has said.

Merger of UniCredit and Capitalia to consolidate Italian footprint and create the No. 1 Eurozone bank by market capitalization

Europe breathed a sigh of relief at Paul Wolfowitz's decision to leave the World Bank and urged the quick selection of a strong successor. Wolfowitz announced on Thursday that he would step down at the end of June, his leadership undermined by a furor over the pay package he arranged in 2005 for his girlfriend Shaha Riza, an employee of the bank.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week clinched a deal that, at least on paper, ensures that his country will remain the world's largest natural-gas exporter for many years to come. Whether Russia will be able to capitalize on the short-term political dividends it may expect from this arrangement remains unclear, however.