The euro steadied on Thursday with a widely expected rate hike from the European Central Bank later being offset by a spreading sovereign debt crisis, while China's bank stocks bounced on hopes of a near-term pause in policy tightening. The risks of sovereign debt default were still very much on the radar of global investors,
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A Turkish court jailed 15 more people, including top soccer club executives, pending trial on Thursday as part of a major match-fixing investigation which the prime minister said is staining the country's image. Three executives of champions Fenerbahce, the chairman of Sivasspor and coach of Eskisehirspor were among the 15 sent to jail on the
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Aer Lingus's booked passenger numbers fell 1.7% in June year-on-year as uncertainty over the threat of industrial action by pilots hit reservations, the Irish carrier said on Thursday. Aer Lingus said its booked load factor, a measure of how well a carrier is selling available seats, was down 2.1 percentage points in June. Passenger numbers
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Shares in South Korean casino and resort operators and construction firms spiked on Thursday, buoyed by expectations that Pyeongchang's hosting of the 2018 Winter Olympics could pump tens of billions of dollars into the economy. At an International Olympic Committee meeting, South Korea won the right to host the contest at the third attempt, capping
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Concern about the pace of economic recovery looks set to persuade the Bank of England to keep interest rates at rock-bottom not just this week but for months to come. UK interest rates have stood at 0.5% since March 2009, when a deep recession and the threat of deflation prompted central banks around the world
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After weeks of impasse, President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders are aiming for "something big" as they resume budget talks on Thursday to avert an imminent default. With Republicans showing new flexibility on taxes, Democrats say Obama will push negotiators to double their target to $4 trln in budget savings over ten years. That would
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* Overheating economy seen as main challenge * Pro-Iran Foreign Minister Davutoglu keeps job * Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan unveiled a new cabinet on Wednesday, retaining Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek to manage the overheating economy and creating a new ministry to press a flagging EU membership bid. "The coming four years will be a high-performance
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New IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde pledged on Wednesday to push ahead with reforms to give fast-growing emerging markets greater sway at the global lender. At a news conference on her second day on the job, Lagarde said the global economy was rebounding from the 2007-2009 financial crisis but unevenly as growth in old-line industrial nations
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U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon will seek a peace deal within a year from Cypriot leaders engaged in reunification talks on Thursday, a source close to the matter said, signalling growing frustration with a slow process that is harming Turkey's EU ambitions. Leaders of the estranged Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities have been locked in rounds
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U.S. stocks fell slightly on Wednesday after Moody's downgrade of Portugal's credit rating to "junk" and China's interest rate rise sparked jitters about global growth prospects. The downgrading of Portugal's credit rating to "junk" shocked financial markets and cast new doubt on European efforts to rescue distressed euro zone states without debt restructuring. "The European
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