As the Federal Reserve tries to counter suspicion of its latest $600 billion stimulus plan, it is making a concerted, if awkward, effort to raise the chairman's profile and harmonize the often-dissonant message from within the central bank. One big fear Bernanke must counter stems from the Fed's bloated balance sheet: with some $2.3 trillion

Britain should have a digital hub in every community to help it build Europe's best broadband network by 2015, which could create up to 600,000 new jobs and add 18 billion pounds ($28 billion) to GDP, the government said. Culture ministers Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey, announcing an extra 50 million pounds for broadband pilots

Christmas or Christmas Day is a holiday observed generally on December 25 to commemorate the birth of Jesus, the central figure of Christianity. The date is not known to be the actual birthday of Jesus, and may have initially been chosen to correspond with either the day exactly nine months after some early Christians believed

Hong Kong shares edged higher on Monday morning, helped by gains on Wall Street, but the benchmark index pulled back from earlier gains as Shanghai stocks faltered, weighed down by property counters. Energy issues were the top performers on the Hang Seng Index, led by CNOOC, as oil prices held at a two-year high. CNOOC

AOL Inc, undergoing a radical transformation into the king of content on the Internet, is actively exploring a breakup involving a complicated series of transactions that may lead to a merger with Yahoo, sources close to the plans told Reuters. The plans are still in the exploratory stage and fraught with complications involving myriad moving

The Federal Reserve could end up buying more than the $600 bln in U.S. government bonds it has committed to purchase if the economy fails to respond or unemployment stays too high, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said. The Fed will regularly review the policy and could adjust the amount of buying up or down depending

Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti called for the issue of joint European sovereign bonds – or "E-bonds" – to assert the "irreversibility of the euro". The pair, in a column published in Monday's Financial Times, said the creation of a European Debt Agency that could issue such bonds would

The euro zone should have a bigger rescue fund for member states in trouble, and the European Central Bank should boost its bond buying to prevent the sovereign debt crisis from derailing economic recovery, an IMF report obtained by Reuters said. International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn will present the report on the economy of