Cuts to the public sector are bound to trigger strikes, the nation's biggest civil service union said Monday, warning the government against taking harsh spending reductions to tackle a record budget deficit.

The new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition is planning spending cuts of around 25 percent across government departments to cut a deficit running close to 11 percent of national output.

European regulators oppose including a sovereign default scenario in stress tests they are conducting on banks, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

Without naming its sources, the news weekly said regulators opposed such a scenario because they felt it would raise doubts over the effectiveness of Europe's bailout mechanism, which was set up to aid states if they are shut out of credit markets.

Ukraine came closer on Saturday to winning a bailout from the International Monetary Fund as an IMF mission said it would recommend lending $14.9 billion (9.8 billion pounds) in a deal to help fill Ukraine's budget gap and boost investor confidence.

The final sum came in at slightly lower than expected as the mission had been discussing a new stand-by facility worth up to $19 billion in negotiations that dragged on for months.

A number of MPs are calling for ticket-touting at big sporting events to be made illegal. The ban would include Wimbledon, where tickets for tomorrow's men's final were being offered on websites for more than £6,000 a pair.