Business News - AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A rush to cash in on tax incentives helped to push up sales of existing US homes by 10.1 percent in October giving momentum to the ailing sector, industry data showed Monday.

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) - France's markets watchdog began hearings on Monday into claims 17 current and former EADS aerospace executives made huge profits with inside information about delays in the Airbus A380 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.

PARIS (AFP) - Top industrialised economies broke free of recession in the third quarter despite falling output in Britain, OECD data showed Monday, but the IMF warned that the recovery was "vulnerable" and markets sent a similar message.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The European Commission on Monday gathered ministerial heads from countries with General Motors plants in the face of fears of a subsidy auction over promised job cuts at the company's European unit Opel/Vauxhall.

LONDON (AFP) - The dollar slid against the euro on Monday on concerns that US authorities may prolong emergency stimulus measures, helping push the price of gold to a record high above 1,170 dollars, analysts said.

LONDON (AFP) - Oil prices rose sharply on Monday as a weaker dollar helped boost demand for the commodity.

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.