VIENNA, April 7 (Reuters) – European bank stress tests will
combine “very conservative” definitions of what counts as
capital and “maximum disclosure” to let investors get a clear
view of lenders’ health, the EU’s top bank supervisor said.

Andrea Enria, chairman of the new European Banking Authority
(EBA), declined to give specifics before criteria of the new
tests emerge on Friday but told reporters he was confident the
tests would be more convincing than last year’s version.

VIENNA, April 1 (Reuters) – Radiation measured at a village
40 km (25 miles) from Japan’s crippled nuclear plant is falling
by the day, the U.N. atomic agency said on Friday, two days
after warning the level exceeded a criterion for evacuation.

Wednesday’s statement by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) had added to pressure on Japan’s government to
extend the exclusion zone beyond 20 km around the severely
damaged Fukushima atomic power station.

VIENNA (Reuters) – The U.N. atomic energy chief called a Vienna summit to tackle mounting concerns about nuclear safety, saying on Monday the international community needed a coordinated response in the wake of Japan’s crisis.

Japan is struggling to avert a severe meltdown at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and officials said highly radioactive water had been leaking from the site hit by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

BELGRADE/VIENNA, March 22 (Reuters) – The Serbian government
will likely decide against the sale of a 51 percent stake in
state run Telekom Srbija to Telekom Austria (TELA.VI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the
Balkan country’s prime minister said on Tuesday.

“The Serbian government will not sell Telekom Srbija below
the minimum price of 1.4 billion euros ($1.9 billion),” Mirko
Cvetkovic said in a statement.

VIENNA (Reuters) – The head of the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) called on Monday for more money and effort to stem a flow of illicit narcotics that earns druglords $320 billion (196 billion pounds) a year.

With global production of opium up almost 80 percent between 1998 and 2009 and the market for cocaine holding up, Russia’s Yury Fedotov said the world needed a more vigorous approach to reducing the supply, demand and trafficking of drugs.

VIENNA (Reuters) – The radioactive contamination of some food near Japan’s stricken nuclear plant has become a concern even as authorities report progress in their battle to prevent a meltdown at the site, U.N. officials said on Sunday.

“There have been some positive developments in the last 24 hours but overall the situation remains very serious,” said Graham Andrew, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

VIENNA (Reuters) – Conditions at a badly damaged Japanese nuclear power plant are grave but not deteriorating badly, the U.N. atomic agency said on Friday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency gave its assessment after Japanese engineers conceded that burying the plant in sand and concrete may be a last resort to prevent a large radiation release, the method used to seal leaks from Chernobyl in 1986.

VIENNA, March 16 (Reuters) – Austrian lender BAWAG P.S.K.
posted its first annual profit in four years as operating profit
rose significantly and risk costs fell, the bank owned by
Cerberus Capital Management LP [CBS.UL] said on Wednesday.

Net interest income and commission income both gained in
2010, while operating costs edged higher and provisions and
impairment losses fell.

VIENNA (Reuters) – Greed in the nuclear industry and corporate influence over the U.N. watchdog for atomic energy may doom Japan to a spreading nuclear disaster, one of the men brought in to clean up Chernobyl said on Tuesday.

Slamming the Japanese response at Fukushima, Russian nuclear accident specialist Iouli Andreev accused corporations and the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of willfully ignoring lessons from the world’s worst nuclear accident 25 years ago to protect the industry’s expansion.

VIENNA (Reuters) – Japan’s massive earthquake and tsunami shook and flooded nuclear power plants but left reactor vessels intact and radiation release was limited, the U.N. atomic watchdog chief said on Monday.

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), expressed confidence Japanese authorities were doing all they could to restore safety at the sites and said a Chernobyl-style disaster was “very unlikely.”