* Welcomes plans for mutual liability pact at Austrian groupVIENNA, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Fitch Ratings put Austrian banking group Volksbanken-Verbund’s (VB-Verbund) ‘bb+’ viability rating on rating watch negative on Tuesday, citing concerns about flagship lender Oesterreichische Volksbanken AG (OeVAG) (OTVVp.VI).Austria’s fourth-biggest bank, which failed a stress test this year, said last week it would post a 2011 loss, form a mutual liability pact with its regional bank shareholders, and not repay a tranche of state aid due this year.Fitch said OeVAG “continues to face material challenges in relation to its capital position, risk profile and business model, despite considerable deleveraging efforts since 2008”.It said it could downgrade VB-Verbund’s viability rating by more than one notch once it had assessed prospects for the group’s capital position, financial strength and business model.Fitch said net profit generated at its regional bank owners would probably not offset OeVAG’s expected group loss of around 500 million euros ($690 million) this year.Fitch had in July flagged concerns about OeVAG’s ability to strengthen core capital. On Tuesday it cited the postponement of announced measures to bolster OeVAG’s balance sheet at a time of rising capital needs for European banks.Of these, only the planned sale of its eastern European arm Volksbank International to Russia’s Sberbank this year was still on track, Fitch noted.It welcomed OeVAG’s plan to reorganise group structure along the lines of Dutch lender Rabobank, which it said was “likely to strengthen corporate governance, risk management control and consolidated supervision”. ($1 = 0.727 Euros)

The ministry had earlier cited Qualcomm missing the deadline for applying for the Internet service providers’ licence as one of the reasons for rejecting the application. The ministry had also said Qualcomm applied for four separate licences, whereas it should have applied for just one.Chandrashekhar told Reuters the licence would be given to a Qualcomm unit that would be the nominee for all the four zones the company won spectrum for.

* Says deal to be completed in coming monthsCOPENHAGEN, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Danish energy group DONG Energy will enter the UK natural gas sales market through the acquisition of gas sales and marketing company Shell Gas Direct, part of energy group Royal Dutch Shell Plc , for 30 million pounds ($47.3 million).The companies have signed a sales and marketing agreement for an acquisition due to be completed in coming months, DONG said in a statement, adding it will acquire 100 percent of the shares of the company.”The acquisition of Shell Gas Direct will provide us with a unique opportunity to enter the UK natural gas sales market,” said Executive Vice President Lars Clausen in a statement.The deal would be subject to final approval by the EU competition authorities, DONG said, and would not change the group’s 2011 financial outlook or expected investment level.

Blog Guy, I’ve been trying to get a job in the exciting outdoor food service industry, and there aren’t any. Do you know why? Of course. Politicians and celebrities are taking all of them. Yes! That’s what happened to me! I tried getting work peeling potatoes in Ireland, and they gave the position to a presidential candidate, instead! Sadly, it’s happening everywhere. Penny-pinching owners of public food stalls are finding VIPs more than willing to do the work, without even having to get pesky health department certifications and stuff like that. Look at these photos. Sarah Palin serving hot dogs, Kate Middleton flipping pancakes… Even Tim Pawlenty watching his presidential campaign shrivel up like a porkchop. Labor Department statistics show that by 2014, 86 percent of the fast-food jobs in this country will be done by politicians, and it’s the same in other countries, too. So there’s nothing I can do? No, but if it’s any consolation, this Irish guy has to live with himself after posing under a sign saying “The Speedypeeler.” That’s a humiliation that’s going to linger… Join the Oddly Enough blog network Follow this blog on Twitter at rbasler Top: Irish Presidential candidate Martin McGuinness peels vegetables during a visit to Ballinasloe Horse fair as he continues cavassing for votes, October 8, 2011. Left: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin serves hot dogs to well-wishers at the annual Governor’s Picnic in Fairbanks, Alaska, July 26, 2009. Bottom left: U.S. Republican presidential candidate and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty grills pork chops at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, August 12, 2011. Right: The fiancee of Britain’s Prince William, Kate Middleton, flips a pancake during their visit on Shrove Tuesday to City Hall in Belfast March 8, 2011. More stuff from Oddly Enough

How many will show up, let alone stay to camp out to disrupt city centers for days, or months, to come, is anyone’s guess. The hundreds at Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park were calling for back-up on Friday, fearing imminent eviction. Rome expects tens of thousands at a national protest of more traditional stamp.Few other police forces expect more than a few thousand to turn out on the day for what is billed as an exercise in social media-spread, Arab Spring-inspired, grassroots democracy with an emphasis on peaceful, homespun debate, as seen among Madrid’s “indignados” in June or at the current Wall Street park sit-in.Blogs and Facebook pages devoted to “October 15” - #O15 on Twitter - abound with exhortations to keep the peace, bring an open mind, a sleeping bag, food and warm clothing; in Britain, “Occupy London Stock Exchange” is at pains to stress it does not plan to actually, well, occupy the stock exchange.That may turn off those with a taste for the kind of anarchic violence seen in London in August, at anti-capitalism protests of the past decade and at some rallies against spending cuts in Europe this year. But, as Karlin Younger of consultancy Control Risks said: “When there’s a protest by an organization that’s very grassroots, you can’t be sure who will show up.”Concrete demands are few from those who proclaim “We are the 99 percent,” other than a general sense that the other 1 percent - the “greedy and corrupt” rich, and especially banks - should pay more, and that elected governments are not listening.”It’s time for us to unite; it’s time for them to listen; people of the world, rise up!” proclaims the Web site United for #GlobalChange. “We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers who do not represent us … We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen.”By doing so peacefully, many hope for a wider political impact, by amplifying the chord their ideas strike with millions of voters in wealthy countries who feel ever more squeezed by the global financial crisis while the rich seem to get richer.”ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”“We have people from all walks of life joining us every day,” said Spyro, one of those behind a Facebook page in London which has grown to have some 12,000 followers in a few weeks, enthused by Occupy Wall Street. Some 5,000 have posted that they will turn out, though even some activists expect fewer will.Spyro, a 28-year-old graduate who has a well-paid job and did not want his family name published, summed up the main target of the global protests as “the financial system.”Angry at taxpayer bailouts of banks since crisis hit in 2008 and at big bonuses still paid to some who work in them while unemployment blights the lives of many young Britons, he said: “People all over the world, we are saying ‘Enough is enough’.”What the remedy would be, Spyro said, was not for him to say but should emerge from public debate - a common theme for those camping out off Wall Street since mid-September, who have stirred up U.S. political debate and, a Reuters poll found, won sympathy from over a third of Americans.A suggestions log posted at 15october.net (“This space is ready for YOUR idea for the revolution”) range from a mass cutting up of credit cards (“hit the banks where it counts”) to “use technology to make education free.”For all such utopianism, the possibility that peaceful mass action, helped by new technologies, can bring real change has been reinforced by the success of Arab uprisings this year.”I’ve been waiting for this protest for a long time, since 2008,” said Daniel Schreiber, 28, an editor in Berlin. “I was always wondering why people aren’t outraged and why nothing has happened and finally, three years later, it’s happening.”Quite what is happening, though, is hard to say. The biggest turnouts are expected where local conditions are most acute.Italian police are preparing for tens of thousands to march in Rome against austerity measures planned by the beleaguered government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.Yet in crisis-ravaged Athens, where big protests have seen violence at times of late, a sense of fatigue and futility may limit numbers on Saturday. In Madrid, where thousands of young “indignados,” or “angry ones,” camped out for weeks, many also feel the movement has run out of steam since the summer.Germans, where sympathy for southern Europe’s debt troubles is patchy, the financial center of Frankfurt, and the European Central Bank in particular, is expected to be a focus of marches calling by the Spanish-inspired Real Democracy Now movement.Complicating German sentiments, however, a series of small bombs found on trains has stirred memories of the left-wing guerrilla attacks that grew in the 1970s from frustration at a lack of change after the student protests of 1968.CITY OF LONDONBritish student protests a year ago were marked by some acts of violence by what authorities say were hard-core anarchists. Days of looting in London in August were put down to motives that mingled political discontent with criminal opportunism.As an international center of finance, the City of London is key target. But organizers know strong police powers make setting up a Wall Street-style protest camp there far from easy.”There’s quite a bit of fatigue setting in,” said one young veteran of last year’s protests against higher university fees. “But if it’s still going by Monday or Tuesday, I think that will excite students and they will head down. The City is much more the focus of people’s anger now, compared to a year ago.”A long Saturday of rallies may start in New Zealand, where the Occupy Auckland Facebook page provides links recommending “suitable clothing … a sleeping bag, a tent, food” — but, in a family-friendly spirit, strictly no drugs or alcohol.Asian authorities and businesses may have less to fear, since most of their economies are still growing strongly.Tracking across the time zones, through towns large and small (“Occupy Norwich!” reads a website from the picturesque English city), the New York example has also prompted calls for similar occupations in dozens of U.S. cities from Saturday.In Houston, protesters plan to tap into anger at big oil companies. As the world’s day ends, hardy souls will be marching in Fairbanks. “We will be obeying traffic lights,” insist the authors of OccupyAlaska.org, and they “will be dressed warm.”History suggests such actions are unlikely, of themselves, to change the world. As one anonymous poster at 15october.net writes, “Fleshing out ideas into living reality has always been the bugbear of radical politics.” And while anger at corporate greed is widespread, there are plenty of voters who would agree with the Australian who posted on the OccupySydney site that those marching will be “the lazy, the paranoid, the confused.”But some analysts do see a potential for political change.Jeff Madrick, a prominent economics writer, speaks warmly of the serious and reasonable debate he found at Zuccotti Park. Revolutions may be rare, but the protests could push lawmakers to act on some of the demands, he said last week: “It may begin to change public opinion enough to give Congress, people in Washington, the courage of their own convictions.”

Deaths from the largest U.S. food-borne listeria outbreak in over two decades have now reached Louisiana where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said two people had died. Deaths had previously been reported in Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming.The death toll from the outbreak now exceeds the number who died from a multi-state listeria outbreak linked to hot dogs and deli turkey from a Michigan processor that started in 1998 and stretched into 1999.Prior to that in 1985, listeriosis killed 48 people in a California outbreak linked to inadequately pasteurized soft cheese in the largest outbreak on record.Some 116 people from 25 states have been sickened in the current outbreak. Because listeria can cause illness as long as two months after a person has consumed contaminated food, health officials have warned that the cases of illness related to the cantaloupes likely will rise through October.The Food and Drug Administration announced that Jensen Farms in Colorado had issued a voluntary recall of its Rocky-Ford brand cantaloupes in mid-September.”Cantaloupes that are known to not have come from Jensen Farms are safe to eat,” the CDC said on Wednesday in a statement. Consumers should ask the grocery store if they have doubt about a cantaloupe’s source, the agency said.Listeria monocytogenes is a frequent cause of U.S. food recalls in processed meats and cheeses, but contamination in fresh produce is a new and worrisome development.People most at risk are the elderly, pregnant woman and people with a weakened immune system, such as those who have had organ transplants or cancer.Symptoms include fever and muscle aches, sometimes preceded by diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems.

Last month, the league had said the team’s lawyers — Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP and Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor LLP — were putting the interest of the owner, Frank McCourt, ahead of the baseball team they represent and should be disqualified.Joseph Farnan, a retired federal judge, was appointed mediator last week to try to settle the battle for control of the league against team owner Frank McCourt.In response to the league withdrawing its motion, Dodgers said the withdrawal was “appropriate” and “ends an unnecessary attempt by MLB to divert the focus in these bankruptcy proceedings from maximizing the value of its estate.”In a separate filing on Tuesday, Fox Sports, a division of News Corp , objected to the proposed auction of the right to broadcast Dodgers’ games, in a bid to bring in billions of dollars.In September, the Dodgers proposed an auction of the rights to broadcast its games. The auction is expected to bring in billions of dollars to stabilize the team’s long-term finances and allow it to emerge from bankruptcy.Last month, Fox had sued the team to stop the proposed sale of television rights and had said any steps taken by the team to sell media rights would be in violation of its current broadcast agreement with Fox.In order to conduct the auction, the team had to break its current broadcast agreement with Fox, which grants Fox exclusive negotiating rights till November 2012.The team filed for bankruptcy in June after Major League Baseball’s commissioner, Bud Selig, rejected a proposed $3 billion, 17-year media rights deal with Fox.The case is In re: Los Angeles Dodgers LLC, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware, No. 11-12010.