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British police and journalists agree that their cozy ties allowed illegal phone hacking to go on too long, an independent investigator said Wednesday.

Elizabeth Filkin, a former Parliamentary standards chief, said a culture of confidential briefings, poor guidance from senior staff too ready to accept reporters’ hospitality and a bias toward some tabloids must be overhauled by London police.

Police officers should be wary of journalists who offer alcoholic drinks, make flirty advances or tempt potential sources into “late-night carousing,” Filkin warned.

“Alcohol is fraught issue … drinking loosens tongues, so common sense is needed,” her guidelines state, warning that “some journalists do not practice abstinence.”

Witnesses from both sides had told her inquiry the issue lay behind the failure of early police investigations to uncover the true extent of media malpractice.

An initial police investigation led to the jailing of a reporter from the now-defunct News of The World tabloid and a private investigator in 2007, but failed to unearth the widespread interception of cell phone voice mail messages of celebrities, sporting stars, legislators and even crime victims.

Since then, London police have identified 5,795 potential phone hacking victims and launched three new inquiries into alleged criminality by the press.

Filkin’s inquiry said relationships between the police, particularly senior officers, and the press had “compromised the capacity of both the police and the media to scrutinize the activities of the other.”

However Filkin, who was appointed by London’s Metropolitan Police to review their relationship with the press, said it would be down to a new police inquiry, not her, to say how badly that had hampered inquiries into phone hacking.

“I don’t know whether it inhibited that inquiry,” Filkin said paydayloans. “What I heard from a large number of people, both journalists and people who work at the Met, was that they feared it had.”

“That was the greatest concern for me from what I heard,” she said, presenting her proposed new guidelines to officers on how to handle the press.

Since the extent of tabloid phone hacking was exposed last summer, more than a dozen News of the World journalists, including former editor Andy Coulson, have been arrested.

The scandal also forced the resignations of London’s top police officer, the Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Stephenson, and assistant commissioner John Yates.

Stephenson quit in July over his links to Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive turned PR consultant. Yates resigned amid criticism of his handling of initial investigation.

“There will be no more secret conversations, there will be no more improper contacts,” said Stephenson’s successor as London’s top police officer, Bernard Hogan-Howe.

Hogan-Howe pledged to take up Filkin’s recommendations in full, including a proposal that officers should in the future record every contact they have with reporters for potential inspection.

Filkin did not discuss in detail allegations that Britain’s press paid London police for information, but said claims from senior officers that only a few people were involved conflicted with accounts she had received from journalists.

Eight people, including a serving police officer and a reporter working for The Sun tabloid, have been arrested as part of an inquiry into the alleged bribes, though no one has been charged.

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Prime Minister Mario Monti is prescribing more

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak said a new era in inter-Korean relations was possible if the North begins behaving sincerely, after the nuclear-armed nation accused Lee of

President Barack Obama will nominate Harvard economist Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell, an investment banker and former Treasury official, to the two empty seats on the Federal Reserve’s policy-setting board of governors.

The White House’s pick of candidates, who have Democratic and Republican credentials respectively, may help speed their nomination through Congress amid a sluggish economic recovery that has failed to put a major dent in the unemployment rate, now at 8.6 percent.

While neither has laid out detailed views on monetary policy, Stein wrote a paper earlier this year suggesting he would back the Fed’s unconventional efforts to keep down long-term borrowing costs, which have been controversial in Washington. The Fed for over three years has adopted an array of radical measures to keep interest rates low and spur recovery.

Stein, who previously worked for the Obama administration as an adviser to the Treasury secretary and a National Economic Council staff member, specializes in stock price behavior, corporate investment and financing decisions, risk management and capital allocation inside firms. He declined to comment on his nomination.

The choice of Powell, who served at the Treasury during President George H. W. Bush’s term in the late 1980s and early 1990s, could be aimed at mollifying Senate Republicans. They blocked Peter Diamond, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, saying the Nobel prize winner was not qualified for the job and was too sympathetic to government intervention in the economy.

Powell is a lawyer by training and worked at Dillon, Read and Bankers Trust Co. after leaving the senior Bush administration and before joining Carlyle Group. His knowledge of financial markets could help him fill the gap left by Kevin Warsh, a former Morgan Stanley executive who acted as Chairman Ben Bernanke’s point-man for crisis negotiations cash advance america.

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However, Powell’s financial industry background may also be a source of criticism from analysts who already see the U.S. central bank as being too cozy with Wall Street.

Powell is currently a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, focused on federal and state fiscal issues. He was not immediately available to comment. Both Stein and Powell had already been flagged in various press reports as likely nominees.

In response to a deep recession and financial crisis, the Fed slashed interest rates to near zero and sharply expanded its balance sheet to $2.8 trillion to keep the economy afloat. Some analysts worry the Fed’s asset purchases could make it harder for the central bank to tighten monetary policy when it decides the time is right.

If Powell and Stein are confirmed, it would be the first time since April 2006 that all seven seats on the Fed’s board are filled. The term currently filled by Elizabeth Duke, the last remaining George W. Bush appointee on the board, is to expire at the end of January, though governors can choose to stay in office until a successor is confirmed.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, a Democrat, welcomed the most recent nominations.

“With the fragile state of the U.S. economy and a looming European debt crisis, Chairman Johnson believes it is imperative that our financial regulators operate at full strength,” his office said in a statement. “Chairman Johnson is committed to moving these nominations though the Banking Committee in a timely manner and is looking to schedule a hearing soon.”

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Canadian Gold and iron producer Eldorado Gold Corp. said Sunday it will buy European Goldfields Ltd. in a deal worth about $2.4 billion, increasing its ability to produce gold.

The Vancouver, British Columbia, company said its offer values each European Goldfields share at 13.08 Canadian dollars ($12.59), based on Eldorado’s closing stock price on the Toronto Stock Exchange Friday.

That comes to 2.5 billion Canadian dollars. It’s a 10 percent premium to European Goldfields’ closing price on the Toronto Stock Exchange Friday.

Eldorado said the deal will create a company with a market capitalization of about 11 billion Canadian dollars ($10.59 billion) and help diversify production. It expects to increase annual production to reach more than 1.5 million ounces of gold by 2015. In October, the company said it expected to produce 650,000 ounces of gold this year.

Eldorado operates in China, Turkey, Brazil and Greece. It has six active mines and other projects in development.

European Goldfields, which is based in Whitehorse, Yukon, operates a mine in Greece and is developing projects in both Greece and Romania pay day loans. It said it has gold reserves of 10 million ounces within the European Union. It is also a partner of Aktor SA, the largest construction company in Greece.

“Integration of European Goldfields’ business with our own will provide Eldorado with the dominant gold mining business in the Aegean Region,” said Eldorado CEO Paul Wright in a statement Sunday. He added that European Goldfields’ partnership with Aktor will help the combined company safely develop operations in Greece.

Under the deal proposed Sunday, European Goldfields stockholders will receive 0.85 Eldorado share and a fraction of a Canadian cent for each European Goldfields share.

The acquisition requires approval from a majority of Eldorado shareholders and two-thirds of European Goldfields shareholders. Shareholders from both companies will meet in February to vote on the deal.

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The euro slid below $1.30 on Wednesday for the first time since the early days of 2011 and Italian borrowing rates rose ominously, as the optimism from a dramatic European summit last week fades with the realization that the continent’s underlying debt problems remain unsolved.

Italy’s last bond auction of the year Wednesday showed the heavily indebted country facing even higher rates to get investors to lend it their cash. The eurozone’s third-largest economy paid 6.47 percent interest to borrow euro3 billion ($3.95 billion) for five years at a bond auction, up from 6.30 percent just a month ago.

Higher rates are a sign that last week’s agreement to tighten the rules against eurozone governments piling up debt has failed to restore confidence.

That’s evident in the performance of the euro too, which has suffered an acute bout of selling since Friday’s deal. On Wednesday, it traded below $1.30 for the first time since January 12, hitting a low of $1.2968.

As experts from the different capitals start the laborious work of putting the deal into practice through a new treaty, the questions continued about the financial steadiness of governments, banks and the eurozone economy, which is showing signs of sinking back into recession. Industrial production fell a further 0.1 percent in October, yet another sign of weakness many think will lead to a recession that will only make repaying debt harder.

“The process of negotiating the final deal to suit all will only add to doubts about its relevance in the long run _ meanwhile the immediate crisis continues,” said Elisabeth Afseth, an analyst at Evolution Securities.

While praised as a step toward preventing another buildup of debt in coming years, last week’s deal does not provide a convincing resolution to the crisis. It does not reduce current debt levels and offered little reassurance that eurozone governments will be able to find the money they need to roll over those debts in the coming few months.

It did not convince markets there is a financial backstop big and flexible enough to support Italy and Spain, the latest focus of the two-year old debt crisis that began in October 2009 when Greece admitted its finances were much worse than it had previously said.

Greece, Ireland and Portugal have all needed bailouts as fear of default spread from country to country and drove up their borrowing rates, eventually cutting them off from bond markets.

The summit did come up with a commitment from EU governments to loan up to euro200 ($264 billion) to the International Monetary Fund, which in turn could help out the eurozone.

Leaders also agreed to activate a new euro500 billion ($659 billion) euro backstop fund, the European Stability Mechanism, a year ahead of time in July. But since the existing rescue funds, which have the same financing caps, would expire once the ESM comes into force, the overall amount of money available from the eurozone to help out struggling governments will remain the same payday loans no teletrack.

The fund is still considered too small to convincingly backstop Italy, which has euro1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) in outstanding debt. That leaves many economists saying that eventually the European Central Bank will have to step up its so-far limited purchases of government debt.

They say only a clear statement by the ECB that it will buy as much debt as needed to keep borrowing costs down can convince markets. That is because the ECB has the power to buy bonds with newly-created money.

The bank however has held off, with ECB head Mario Draghi saying governments must cut deficits and take steps to improve growth themselves to win back bond market confidence _ and not rely on central bank bailouts.

The current limited bond buys have eased some of the pressure on Italy, but the bank says they are only intended to steer short term interest rates, which is its main job.

Draghi must also contend with fierce opposition to printing money to fund large-scale bond purchase from Germany’s Bundesbank central bank, which is part of the ECB.

Bundesbank head Jens Weidmann is the leading critic of the idea, saying that creating new money would violate the bank’s legal mandate, since the EU treaty requires it to fight inflation as its first priority.

The debt treaty does provide some assurance governments are working together to address the euro’s flaws in the long-term. But it will not be signed until March at the earliest, and a text must first win approval from the 17 eurozone governments and nine others that the EU hopes will sign. Britain has said it will not.

The first draft of the new treaty is expected to be circulated among European capitals sometime next week, EU officials say, but governments will likely try to keep its content confidential until some of the more tricky issues have been resolved.

The biggest among these is how the new accord will interact with the existing Treaty of the European Union and whether it can rely on EU institutions, such as the European Commission and the European Court of Justice, to enforce the new budget rules.

Governments and national parliaments are also likely to watch closely how much sovereignty they are transferring to Brussels or their fellow euro members and whether their own constitutions will be affected.

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Gabriele Steinhauser is Brussels contributed to this report.

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Greek lawmakers have approved next year’s austerity budget, extending tough spending cuts that have sparked a series of often violent protests.

The 2012 budget passed early Wednesday foresees a fourth year of recession, but also projects a modest primary surplus _ a surplus excluding interest payments on debt _ for the first time in years.

Debt-crippled Greece’s financial woes have roiled the euro, with Europe’s single currency facing its largest crisis since it went into circulation in 2002.

The country has been relying for financial survival on billions of euros (dollars) in rescue loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund since May 2010. In return, Greece cut pensions and salaries while repeatedly hiking taxes to reduce its bloated budget deficits.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) _ Greece’s lawmakers were set Tuesday to pass next year’s austerity budget, extending tough spending cuts measures that have already left Greeks struggling as the country tries to slash its debts and pull itself out of a severe recession.

With three parties, including the country’s majority socialists and their rival conservatives, involved in Greece’s new coalition government, the budget is expected to pass with an overwhelming majority in a midnight vote.

The end of the budget debate coincided with the third anniversary of a fatal police shooting of a teenager in central Athens, and as lawmakers spoke clashes broke out in front of Parliament between hundreds of anarchists and riot police during a commemorative march.

Masked youths hurled stones, bottles and firebombs at police, who responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades on Tuesday night. Earlier in the day, violence also broke out on the fringes of a separate march by about 2,000 students who clashed with riot police outside Parliament.

Speaking inside the building during the debate, conservative party leader Antonis Samaras said his objections to many of the austerity measures already passed remained, but that he was backing the budget as the priority now was to reduce the debt.

“We are voting today for the budget, firstly because we we are giving immediate priority to to ensuring the viability of Greek debt and to maintain the the targets of fiscal adjustment,” he said.

Samaras was a vocal critic of the austerity measures over the past two years, insisting that increased taxation in particular was the wrong method and that taxes should be cut in order to stimulate the economy.

The conservative leader said the crisis had also shown up problems within the eurozone.

“It has been proved that repeated efforts until now to stabilize the euro have failed,” he said. “And that the euro crisis is not only due to Greece’s bad fiscal situation, but also to the eurozone’s inability to deal with its problems.”

The 2012 budget foresees a fourth year of recession, although it also projects a primary surplus _ a surplus excluding interest payments on debt _ of 1.1 percent of gross domestic product.

Greece’s debt troubles have roiled the euro, with Europe’s single currency facing its largest crisis since it went into circulation in 2002. The Standard & Poor’s ratings agency placed 15 of the 17 eurozone countries on notice for possible downgrades. The only two it left out were Cyprus, whose bonds have near-junk status, and Greece, whose low ratings suggest it is likely to default on its debts soon anyway.

On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged changes to the EU treaty that would centralize decision-making on spending and borrowing for the eurozone. Tighter political and economic coordination among euro countries is seen as a precursor to further financial aid from the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, or some combination.

Greece has been relying for financial survival on billions of euros (dollars) in rescue loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund since May 2010. In return for the first bailout, the country imposed a series of harsh austerity measures, including salary and pension cuts and repeated rounds of tax hikes that have left the country mired in a deep recession.

Despite the measures, the government found itself persistently missing the fiscal targets set out in its first bailout. A second rescue package worth euro130 billion ($175 billion) was put together in October, and includes plans for private creditors to write off 50 percent of their Greek bonds, potentially cutting the country’s debt by euro100 billion. Negotiations on the details of the deal are expected to extend into the new year.

A sudden announcement last month by then prime minister George Papandreou that he would put the hard-fought deal to a referendum triggered a political crisis that forced him to step down and a coalition government be formed. A former central banker, Lucas Papademos, has been appointed to lead the interim government until early elections, tentatively set for February.

The crisis has taken its toll on the popularity of Greece’s main political parties, though Papandreou’s Socialists have taken the severest hit. Just two years after a landslide election victory with 44 percent of the vote, they are polled at enjoying just 15.3 percent support and trail the conservatives who have 21.5 percent, according to a GPO survey for Mega television.

The poll of 1,400 adults was conducted between Nov. 30 and Dec. 5. No margin of error was given.

According to the poll, the vast majority of Greeks _ 80.7 percent _ believe the country’s financial situation will deteriorate further in 2012, while 79.3 percent believe Greece’s rescue deal with the EU and IMF failed to resolve the debt crisis.

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Derek Gatopoulos and Demetris Nellas in Athens contributed.

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Asian stock markets fell Tuesday after Standard and Poor’s warned 15 countries using the euro currency that their credit ratings are at risk of a downgrade.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 0.8 percent to 8,628.73. South Korea’s Kospi dipped 0.7 percent to 1,908.75 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1 percent to 18,988.82. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.6 percent to 4,293.90. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan and New Zealand also gave up ground.

The S&P announcement came only hours after French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday unveiled sweeping plans to change the European Union treaty in an effort to keep tighter checks on overspending nations.

The S&P warning left out only two of 17 countries that use the euro: Cyprus, whose bonds have near-junk status, and Greece, which already has ratings low enough to suggest that it’s likely to default soon anyway. The inclusion on the list of Germany, Europe’s strongest economy, was the biggest surprise.

The Franco-German plan, which would tie the 17 euro nations closer together, would likely also result in heavier financial burdens for Germany and other stronger economies that have already put up billions of euros to rescue Greece, Ireland and Portugal no fax payday loans.

Sarkozy and Merkel discussed several broad changes for the EU treaty, including the introduction of a penalty for any government that allows its deficit to exceed 3 percent of gross domestic product. The penalty would be automatic _ unless a majority of nations opposed it, a loophole that drew sharp criticism from analysts.

Andrew Sullivan, principal sales trader at Piper Jaffray in Hong Kong, said the sanctions were “subject to political control” and in reality represent no change from mechanisms already in existence.

The French-German proposal will be taken up at a summit of EU leaders on Thursday and Friday aimed at fixing a debt crisis so severe that it threatens the viability of the euro currency.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.7 percent to 12,097.83. The S&P 500 rose 1 percent to 1,257.1. The Nasdaq added 1.1 percent to 2,655.76.

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Premier Mario Monti convened a Cabinet meeting in Rome on Sunday to discuss emergency austerity and growth measures aimed at saving the euro currency from collapse.

Monti is under extreme pressure to come up with speedy and credible measures that will persuade markets to stop betting against the common currency.

The Cabinet was originally scheduled to meet Monday, but was moved up following Monti’s weekend of meetings with political parties, unions, business groups and consumer lobbies.

The premier hasn’t disclosed details of his rescue plan, but has said it includes both austerity cuts and measures to boost growth in Italy’s anemic economy. He has promised it would be socially equitable, and that it would go after those who hadn’t paid their share of taxes before.

With the meeting still under way, Monti’s office issued a statement saying the package was still under discussion.

The various parties briefed have said the package likely includes reinstating an unpopular home property tax abolished by Berlusconi, raising the sales tax and the income tax at the highest brackets by a few percentage points, and requiring Italians to work more than the 40 years now needed to receive a pension.

The head of Italy’s industrial lobby said Sunday that the survival of the common euro currency depends on Italy’s coming up with very strong austerity and growth measures _ followed by a concerted effort at the European level so that Italian sacrifices are not in vain.

Confindustria President Emma Marcegaglia told reporters after meeting with Monti that the measures are “very heavy.”

The coming days “will decided if the euro will survive or not no fax payday loans. The first move to save the euro is in Italian hands, with a very strong measures,” Marcegaglia said. The measures will be “fundamental to saving Italy and to saving the euro.”

Italian borrowing costs have spiked, which could spell disaster if Italy is unable to keep up on payments to service its enormous debt of euro1.9 trillion ($2.57 trillion), or 120 percent of its GDP.

Unlike Greece, Portugal and Ireland, which got bailouts after their borrowing rates skyrocketed, the eurozone’s third-largest economy is considered to be too big to bail out. An Italian default would be disastrous for the 17-member eurozone and reverberate throughout the global economy.

Union head Raffaele Bonnani, however, urged Monti to reconsider raising the pension age across the board, saying that workers in hard labor should be allowed to retire without added requirements, and that women who join the work force after raising children might have to work well into old age if the 40-year seniority requirement were raised.

But he said he was against calling a general strike at this sensitive moment, and would instead pursue a policy of negotiation with the government.

Marcegaglia said the measures were concentrated on raising taxes _ and to balance that she called for an immediate look at ways to cut political and bureaucratic spending. “This kind of fiscal pressure is not sustainable,” she said.

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Developers asked the Ballwin Board of Aldermen Monday for help financing a development at the old Rothman Furniture location at Manchester Road and Seven Trails Drive.

The board has approved the development of a Wendy’s fast food restaurant and U-Gas at 14799 Manchester Road.

Project Manager William Biermann asked the city for financial support through a tax-increment financing district. Biermann said the taxes raised would be used to pay to remove dirt and materials excavated from the site payday loans for bad credit. He said the cost of the work had been miscalculated by up to $700,000.

The board may consider support in the future. Biermann said the project was going to be completed despite the cost mistake.

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