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The European Union has agreed that around 100 billion euros is needed to recapitalise the European banking system, but splits remain before a high-profile summit on Sunday over how to strengthen the euro zone's bailout fund.

In an attempt to further distance himself from his rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he will soon lay out details of his flat tax plan.

A split between the International Monetary Fund and the European Union is threatening to delay Greece's next aid payment in another blow to European efforts to stem the debt crisis.

Greek unions began a 48-hour general strike Wednesday, the biggest protest in years, as Parliament prepared to vote on sweeping new austerity measures designed to stave off a default that could trigger a crisis in the wider Eurozone.

President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos cut Angola's growth forecast for 2011 to 3.7 percent on Tuesday due mainly to lower crude production but the economy should bounce back with a 12 percent expansion next year.

Kazakhstan, the second-largest ex-Soviet economy and oil producer after Russia, has enough reserves to weather a new wave of financial crisis and keep its currency stable, the National Bank governor told Reuters Insider TV.

Strauss-Kahn was on a list of politicians, lawyers and businessmen involved in a prostitution ring that extended from France to Belgium and may have included women under the age of 18.

Prime Minister George Papandreou appealed for unity on Monday as Greece braced for a 48-hour general strike timed to coincide with a vote on a deeply unpopular package of austerity measures demanded by international lenders.

Francois Hollande won France's Socialist Party nomination on Sunday, positioning him to run against Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's presidential election. Creating unity with in his own party will be an enormous task.

François Hollande has won the Oct. 16 primary election against Martine Aubry, making him the Socialist Party candidate to challenge incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy for the French presidency, but his lack of experience and foreign policy know-how may still be his undoing.

The chief public finance official of the world's largest economy said Sunday that he sees a ray of light in Europe's most recent effort to stop its sovereign debt crisis. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, while attending a Group of Twenty (G20) meeting in Paris, said he is encouraged by the latest effort to address the crisis.

Ireland has come to grips with its banking problems, but it will not be able to pop the champagne until its unemployment rate starts to come down, a senior official with the International Monetary Fund said Saturday.

Ireland has come to grips with its banking problems but it will not be able to pop the champagne until its unemployment rate starts to come down, a senior official with the International Monetary Fund said on Saturday.

The Bank of Canada won't be trigger happy as it mulls what to do on interest rates, but has room to ease policy if it needs to kick start the economy, central bank Governor Mark Carney said.

Greece could use state-owned real estate assets as collateral for new bonds to raise more than 100 billion euros ($138.7 billion), under a proposal put forward by a leading Greek think-tank and a former conservative minister.

The world's leading economies kept the pressure firmly on Europe to sort out its debt crisis on Saturday with the sense of urgency to be reflected in a communique at the end of a G-20 finance chiefs' meeting.

G20 ministers should not focus on increasing the International Monetary Fund's resources and should instead keep the pressure on Europe to resolve its debt crisis, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Friday.

The International Monetary Fund may need a capital injection of about $350 billion to give it more firepower to fight economic crises, an emerging market G20 source said on Friday.

Brazil, Russia, India and China are working on ways to contribute money rapidly to expand the effective funds of the International Monetary Fund, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing people familiar with talks among the countries.

The Fund said gross domestic product (GDP) growth across Asia will average 6.3 percent in 2011, and 6.7 percent in 2012 (in April, the IMF forecast nearly 7 percent growth for both years).

China has the scope to respond if global economic risks materialize, and the country's response could partially but not entirely offset the impact of a global crisis, the International Monetary Fund's Asia and Pacific director said on Thursday.

Gold prices held steady on Thursday, as optimism for a solution to the Eurozone crisis underpinned sentiment, while tight physical supply in Asia continued to lend support.

IMF said on Thursday that downside risks in Asia are rising due to Europe's debt woes and a U.S. slowdown

The United States will use a finance ministers' meeting in Paris this weekend to ratchet up pressure on Europe to deal with its debt crisis swiftly before it derails a fragile global recovery, a top U.S. Treasury Department official said on Wednesday.

Two years into the Greek sovereign debt crisis, Eurozone countries are still finger-pointing and not working toward a long-term solution based on mutual interest. Further, the most recent $11 billion band-aid for Greece will buy no peace for stakeholders, nor any resolution to the crisis.

Egypt's Finance Minister Hazem el-Beblawi has quit after less than three months in the post over the government's handling of a protest by Coptic Christians on Sunday night, an aide to Beblawi said on Tuesday.

EU, IMF and ECB inspectors gave tepid approval for a vital aid tranche to Greece on Tuesday, saying that despite some fiscal progress Athens was lagging on privatizations and structural reforms needed to exit its debt crisis.

U.S. stocks are mixed Tuesday morning as investors wait for the result of a Slovak vote on the Eurozone bailout fund expansion.

There were fears that without the cash injection, the government wouldn’t be able to pay public servants and therefore default on its debt.