The European Union's top official on Tuesday defended the political will of EU leaders to resolve the euro-zone debt crisis, despite concerns that they seem unable to halt a slide back into recession and avoid a fresh banking crisis. EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso was speaking at a conference in Australia, the morning after

 * Nikkei, MSCI, Euro STOXX, S&P down; Gold above record $1,919 *  Asian shares and the euro fell on Tuesday, gold jumped to a fresh record while European stocks appear set to slide further on fears that Europe's sovereign debt troubles are worsening and could trigger a second full-blown banking crisis. S&P 500 futures fell

About 300,000 Internet users in Iran have been spied on last month by one or several hackers who stole security certificates from a Dutch IT firm, a report presented by the Dutch government said on Monday. Using a stolen certificate the hacker, or hackers, monitored people who visited Google.com, could steal their passwords and could

Google has dedicated an animated doodle to flamboyant rock star Freddie Mercury of Queen, who would have been 65 on Monday. He had died of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS on November 24, 1991, only one day after publicly acknowledging he had the disease. The Parsi-born and British raised singer is best known for his

The current and incoming head of the European Central Bank demanded on Monday that European governments quickly implement a strengthening of a regional bailout fund and press ahead with wider reforms. With some euro zone states dragging their heels in approving the reform of the European Financial Stability Facility agreed in July, ECB President Jean-Claude

Israeli passengers said they were segregated and searched at Istanbul airport on Monday and Turkish tourists made similar complaints about treatment in Israel, accounts that further stoked a heated feud between the two countries. Three days after Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador over Israel's refusal to apologise for a raid that killed nine Turks on a

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief who is back home in France with his career in tatters after a sex-assault scandal, is likely to take a role in the left's 2012 election campaign, a political ally said on Monday. Pierre Moscovici, a Socialist Party lawmaker and former government minister, was one of Strauss-Kahn's biggest backers

Europe's sovereign debt crisis will stunt bank profit for years and could kill off the weakest, Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann told industry bosses, amid intense scrutiny of the sector's finances. "Prospects for the financial sector overall … are rather limited," the CEO of Germany's top bank said on Monday. "The outlook for the

Activity in Britain's dominant services sector slowed at the fastest pace in a more than a decade last month, and firms' confidence in future business weakened to a one-year low, adding to evidence of a stalling economic recovery. Sterling slipped to a one-and-a-half month low versus the dollar after the data, and gilt futures rose