Business News - AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A rush to cash in tax incentives helped boost sales of existing US homes 10.1 percent in October, according to data Monday showing fresh momentum for the sector at the heart of the economic crisis.

MADRID (AFP) - European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said Monday it was "premature" to declare the global financial crisis over, although the "freefall" in economic activity has been halted.

PARIS (AFP) - The French markets watchdog heard claims Monday that 17 current and former EADS aerospace executives saved themselves millions by exploiting insider knowledge of problems with the A380 superjumbo project.

LONDON (AFP) - Britain's political leaders clashed Monday at a key business conference over how to fix rocketing public debt and spark economic recovery, with an election looming next year.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - A Boeing 747, one of four engines powered by a 50-percent biokerosene mix, circled the Netherlands for an hour on Monday for what airline KLM called the world's first passenger flight using biofuel.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - European governments pulled back on Monday from a subsidy war feared by EU commission officials as US auto maker General Motors prepares severe job cuts in Europe.

NEW YORK (AFP) - The dollar came under fresh pressure Monday after comments suggesting US authorities may extend emergency stimulus measures, encouraging traders to move into riskier assets including gold.

NEW YORK (AFP) - Oil prices rose Monday as a weaker dollar helped boost demand for commodities.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Google is acquiring Web display advertising startup Teracent, the Internet giant announced on Monday.

MADRID (AFP) - With Spain facing its worst recession in decades, the government will approve this week a sweeping package of reforms aimed at changing the nation's economic growth model, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Sunday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has voiced confidence that the US economy will make a strong recovery and poured cold water on talk of dropping the dollar as the key global currency.

LONDON (AFP) - British business will reshape the way it works as a consequence of the recession, with innovative lending practices and commercial models emerging, the nation's top employers' body said Monday.

WARSAW (AFP) - The European Union may have inched out of its sharpest recession since the global slump of the 1930s, but green shoots are not emerging uniformly across the 27-nation bloc's eastern member states.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - With its deal to buy Revolution Money, American Express is taking aim at the growing market for online and alternative payments, in a challenge to recognized leader PayPal, analysts say.

NEW YORK (AFP) - The 20-year record high bankruptcy rate for US banks and businesses is giving regional banks on sound footing the opportunity to expand swiftly and on the cheap.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US retailers are taking desperate measures to spark holiday sales in the face of what promises to be another troubled year-end shopping season.

MINSK (AFP) - Scorned as Europe's last dictatorship, ranked dismally by rating agencies and possessing few natural resources, Belarus has struggled to attract foreign investors.

BERLIN (AFP) - German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said Sunday it had signed a multi-billion-euro contract to build high-speed railway lines and underground transport networks in Qatar and Bahrain.

MADRID (AFP) - Thousands of Spanish farmers marched Saturday through the streets of Madrid, halting traffic to protest the low prices they receive for their produce which they say is leading them to financial "ruin."

SAINT PETERSBURG (AFP) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday strongly backed President Dmitry Medvedev's call for economic modernisation, moving to smother talk of differences between the two leaders.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Back from an Asia tour, President Barack Obama called Saturday for the United States to produce more goods to sell across the Pacific, touting trade as a way to revive the troubled US economy.

BERLIN (AFP) - A panel of top German economists, which has slammed the country's huge public debt, says Chancellor Angela Merkel's new government should take back its "gift baskets" of tax relief, a German weekly reported.

BERLIN (AFP) - EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen has criticised informal financial pledges to General Motors by countries vying to save jobs at factories belonging to the automaker's European unit.

PARIS (AFP) - French tyre maker Michelin will build a new factory in Brazil at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, the company's chief executive Michel Rollier told a newspaper Saturday.

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey is determined to build a nuclear power plant and will launch a new project to replace a failed tender, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz was quoted as saying Saturday.

VIENNA (AFP) - Austria has begun talks with Russia in view of joining Moscow's South Stream gas pipeline project, Austrian newspapers reported on Saturday.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Two executives at a banknote-making firm part-owned by Australia's central bank have been suspended over a police probe into alleged bribery and kickbacks, officials said.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - Thousands of workers protested in four Dutch cities on Saturday against a government decision to increase the state retirement age from 65 to 67 by 2025.