The Spanish government plans to cut speed limits in and around cities as part of a drive to reduce the country's fuel bill and do its bit for the environment.

Miguel Sebasti

International agreements on climate change, food security and energy use could drift beyond reach if next week's Geneva talks on liberalising world trade collapse, Peter Mandelson, the European Union's chief trade negotiator, warned on Thursday.

"The chances for a breakthrough are improving, but that breakthrough is not yet in the bag,' said Mr Mandelson.

A Doha deal was important, he said, because "the global economy faces a barrage of problems... It would bring fresh confidence to a world economy that is certainly in need of it'.

Oil prices plunged below $130 a barrel yesterday, extending a sharp three-day decline and fuelling a second day of big gains in stocks that lifted Wall Street out of bear market territory.

The continued fall in oil, which last week reached a record high of $147.27, combined with the rally in bank stocks to brighten what a few days ago looked like an increasingly bleak financial and economic outlook.

The French government on Thursday ordered an investigation into the water table around all of France's 58 nuclear reactors in an effort to dispel fears raised by a leak from a treatment plant run by Areva in southern France.

Jean-Louis Borloo, ecology minister, has asked an independent committee to carry out the probe to stem mounting public concern over nuclear waste management after a low-grade leak at the Socatri treatment plant at Tricastin focused public attention on a still unexplained, older contamination of the water table.

The rise in food and oil prices could "severely weaken' the economies of up to 75 developing countries, including Pakistan and Indonesia, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday in its first broad assessment of the crisis. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF managing-director, warned that some countries were now at "a tipping point' because of the double impact of rising food and oil prices.

France is to slap an annual green tax on high-emission cars, such as sports utility vehicles, and extend punitive taxes to more environmentally damaging products in an attempt to revolutionise consumer behaviour and combat climate change.

Disunity and recrimination marked the start of France's European Union presidency on Tuesday as Nicolas Sarkozy exchanged accusations with the European Commission over world trade talks. The French president denounced Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, in a television interview on Monday evening for allegedly selling out EU farmers

GlaxoSmithKline, the UK-based pharmaceutical company, is unlikely to receive US approval for its key cervical cancer vaccine until 2010 at the earliest, under a new timetable it released on Monday. After requests for fresh information on Cervarix from the Food & Drug Administration in December, GSK said it had decided to await completion of a pivotal clinical trial to be filed with the US regulator during the first half of next year.

Posco of South Korea, the world's fourth-largest steelmaker, has moved to strengthen the security of its coal supplies by joining ArcelorMittal and China's Citic on the share register of Macarthur Coal. The three groups together now control almost half of the A$4.2bn (US$4bn) Australian group, making it virtually impossible for one of them to launch a successful takeover bid for Macarthur without the others' agreement.

Dubai is backing a Kremlin-linked energy company in an offer to buy the last and biggest of Russia's wholesale power-generating companies in a potential $5bn-plus deal that could mark the first strategic foray into Russia by a Middle Eastern fund. Anatoly Chubais, Russia's former privatisation chief and chief executive of Unified Energy Systems, said on Monday that Roskommunenergo, a Russian energy company, had joined Dubai World the investment arm of the United Arab Emirates to offer to buy OGK-1.