European shares plummeted Friday as panic selling spread from Asia and the United States amid fears the global credit squeeze could trigger a global recession.

The Nobel Peace Prize is regarded as the top award for efforts towards a more peaceful world and the only Nobel award that can be given to organizations as well as individuals. The award is handed out by a committee of the Norwegian parliament.

Prominent laureates included Mother Teresa (1979), the Dalai Lama (1989) and Nelson Mandela (1993). The winners since 1998, including the citations given by the academy, were:

The Vienna Stock Exchange suspended trading shortly after the market opened on Friday morning, after shares fell by around 10 per cent.

Since last Friday, shares on the blue-chip ATX index have lost 23 per cent of their value.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) scheduled a special meeting in November, as the cartel's crude price remained below 80 dollars for the second day in a row on Thursday.

One barrel (159 litres) of OPEC crude stood at 78.25 dollars Thursday, rising 0.87 dollars from 77.38 dollars on the previous day, according to figures released by the cartel on Friday.

A computer hard drive containing private details of up to half of Britain's armed forces personnel has disappeared in the latest of a series of "lost data" scandals, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed Friday.

The ministry said its police were searching for the portable drive containing the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of around 100,000 serving personnel and their families.

Belgrade has expelled the Montenegrin ambassador and is set to take the same step in relations with Macedonia in reaction to the two countries' recognition of Kosovo, reports said Friday.

Podgorica and Skopje recognized Kosovo, a territory Serbia still claims as its province, Thursday night, some eight months after it unilaterally declared independence.

Though it was certain to strain ties with Serbia, a major trade and economic partner, Montenegro and Macedonia jointly said they "remain committed to further promotion of ... relations with Serbia."

Singapore entered its first recession since 2002 after its economy contracted for the second-straight quarter, prompting its government to revise downward its projections of the city-state's 2008 economic growth.

Singapore's gross domestic product shrank at an annualized rate of 6.3 per cent in the July-September quarter, compared with the second quarter, when the prosperous South-East Asian city's economy contracted 5.7 per cent, the Trade and Industry Ministry said.

In real, year-on-year terms, the third-quarter slowdown was measured at 0.5 per cent.

Within clear sight of a Pakistani military observation post, Taliban insurgents launch a ferocious barrage of fire against two dozen US and Afghan army troops perched on a tiny frontier hilltop.

Caught off-guard by the mid-afternoon attack, the unit must weather a 20-minute onslaught with rocket-propelled grenades, machine-guns and automatic rifles until helicopter gunships come to its aid.

Eleven years after British rule ended, only one in seven Hong Kong people consider that they speak good English, according to a survey released Friday.

More than 40 per cent of people in the former British colony describe their level of English as below average or worse while 15 per cent describe it as good and only 3 per cent say it is excellent.

The survey, which involved interviews with more than 1,000 people aged 15 to 64 in February, was conducted by an English language education company that trained interpreters for the Beijing Olympics.

A Hong Kong couple have been arrested after leaving their five daughters alone at home for about a week with 130 US dollars, a news report said Thursday.

Police discovered the girls, aged 6 to 15, had been left alone by their parents when they arrested one of them, aged 9, for shoplifting, the Hong Kong Standard newspaper reported.

The parents had left the children in the public housing flat for at least five days during their visit to mainland China.