GERMANY PREPARED TO BACK LOWER BAIL-OUT RATES - The Irish Times report that Germany is prepared to back lower-interest loans to Ireland and other peripheral euro zone countries if they agree to anchor a new 'fiscal framework' in their constitutions.
The paper reports the comments of a senior German official, Jörg Asmussen, ahead of a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso.
Mr Asmussen said that Berlin was prepared to look at the 'certain margin' on loans to Greece or those to Ireland through the euro zone rescue fund.
'We can look at this if countries at the same time would be willing to accept a kind of national fiscal framework to be enshrined in their constitution, yes,' said Mr Asmussen.
He declined to specify what 'framework' he had in mind, but officials pointed to Berlin's 2009 'debt brake' as a guideline. This constitutional provision limits new federal borrowing to 0.35% of GDP from 2016.
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HUNDREDS OF JOBS TO GO AT ANGLO, IRISH NATIONWIDE - The Irish Independent reports on plans for jobs losses at Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide.
Hundreds of jobs are to be axed, the paper says, under a plan to be submitted to the European Commission by the end of the month. The news means the 1,600 staff at the two institutions will be the first to learn their fate in the year's massive banking jobs cull.
The first job losses may come as plans to merge Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish Bank's loan books and transfer the institutions' deposits to healthier banks progress.
'Cleary there will be rationalisation, clearly there will be job cuts,' the paper quotes one source as saying.
Industry sources stressed, however, that it was wrong to assume that all of the staff dealing with the deposit side of Irish Nationwide and Anglo's books would lose their jobs.
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SUGAR SHORTAGES TO HIT FOOD FIRMS - The Irish Examiner reports on a claim by the food wing of employers' group IBEC that sugar shortages in the European Union will leave Irish food companies facing price increases and ingredient sourcing difficulties this year.
Food and Drink Industry Ireland has called on the Department of Agriculture to support the food industry at an upcoming meeting of the European Commission's sugar management committee, which is planning to issue 350,000 tonnes of sugar export licences.
World market sugar prices reached a 30-year high in November.
The group predicts 2011 will be the third year that global production/consumption has been in deficit.
The group said its members were having difficulty sourcing sugar and that a larger quantity of sugar needed to be made available within the EU.
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BBC WORLD SERVICE TO SLASH JOBS - British newspapers report on job-losses in the BBC World Service.
The Daily Telegraph reports that at least 600 jobs are to be lost and five foreign-language services are to close.
The redundancies amount to over a quarter of the World Service's 2,000 employees, and are double the level that the head of the World Service, Peter Horrocks, indicated would be necessary just three months ago.
The bulk of the cuts will be borne by the English-language World Service radio network, which alone will shed 300 jobs. It will see its newsroom, as well as back office functions such as finance and human resources, more closely integrated with the BBC's domestic news operation.
Many of its bespoke programmes, such as Outlook and Newshour, will disappear completely.
