Greek shop owners resisting on-site tax checks have been dealt penalties including a one-month shutdown, authorities said on Thursday after international lenders piled pressure on Athens to collect revenues. In one case, shop-owners who had failed to issue sales receipts bullied away tax inspectors conducting checks at a local festival on the island of Crete,

The dollar steadied above seven-week lows on Friday but remained vulnerable to more losses if Chinese industrial production data adds to a growing view Beijing was taming its economic slowdown, while Japanese shares are set for a heavy weekly fall. Copper retreated from a near two-month high after unexpected strength in trade data from top

ANALYSIS – Judges say he is treated the same as anybody else Silvio Berlusconi says he is the victim of politicised judges, his enemies that he has finally been nailed after two decades evading the law. Either way, the fate of Italy's dominant politician highlights deep problems with the country's judicial system. Ever since he entered

Technology and media circles are abuzz at how e-commerce wunderkind Jeff Bezos plans to modernize The Washington Post, a money-losing bastion of the old economy. Among the top predictions: the man who transformed retailing will want to wean the venerable paper off its print edition; expand the Post's real-time content for a Twitter generation; share

Greece's jobless rate hit a new record high of 27.6 percent in May, official national data showed on Thursday as the country staggers under austerity linked to its international bailout. Record joblessness is a nightmare for Greece's two-party coalition government as it scrambles to hit fiscal targets and show there is light at the end

Although he has vowed to fight on, Silvio Berlusconi's conviction for tax fraud has fuelled speculation that his eldest daughter Marina, head of his $6.6 billion business empire, could take his place as leader of the centre-right in Italy. Loyalists in his People of Freedom (PDL) party insist that the 76-year old Berlusconi remains firmly

Signs of resilience in China's slowing economy on Thursday helped end a 3-day selloff in world equities prompted by talk the U.S. Federal Reserve could soon wind back its stimulus programme. China's reported its exports and imports had rebounded surprisingly strongly in July, easing fears that a slowdown in the world's second largest economy will

Sterling was firmer on Thursday, near 1-1/2 month highs against the dollar, on expectations that an improving UK economy could prompt the central bank to tighten policy sooner rather than later. A raft of good data recently, including forecast-busting services sector activity, has indicated the UK's recovery is on a firmer footing and businesses could