CHINA

China pushed back on Thursday against pressure from Paris and Washington for swift reform of a global monetary system that French President Nicolas Sarkozy said is so unstable that it could tip the world economy back into crisis.

Tightly controlled exchange rate regimes are the main flaw in the international monetary system and the solution is simple, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a G20 meeting on Thursday.

Opposing views about how to reform the global monetary system were laid bare at a meeting of the top 20 economies on Thursday, with France setting out a bold agenda, China warning that change must be gradual and the United States saying the solution was simple.

Telecommunications stocks led U.S. indexes higher Wednesday, as optimism over deal activity added to confidence that jobs data would continue pointing to a strengthening labor market.

A long-running transatlantic trade dispute over illegal state handouts for Airbus and Boeing comes to a head Thursday with the latest ruling from the World Trade Organization.

President Barack Obama told U.S. students on Wednesday that with rapid growth in China and India, global demand for energy will continue to increase and a solution for reducing U.S. dependence on imported oil would require long term solutions, setting out goals for reducing oil imports and boosting the use of alternative electricity sources decades from now.

The Australian dollar, which was free floated in 1983, just hit an all-time high against the US dollar.

Gold shot up by nearly one percent on Wednesday, after four sessions of losses amid broad support from unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, but gains may stay limited by expectations monetary policy in key regions may tighten. Spot gold was bid at $1,430.55 an ounce at 1344 GMT, against $1,415.95 late in New York on Tuesday.

The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market gainers are: Cephalon, Netlist, Achillion Pharmaceuticals, ClickSoftware Technologies, and Glu Mobile. The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market losers are: China Information Technology, Golar LNG, Tibco Software, EDAP TMS, Vodafone Group, and Dell.

U.S. chemicals group DuPont extended its $6 billion takeover bid for Danisco by four weeks after holders of only 6 percent of the Danish company's shares had accepted the offer.

U.S. chemicals company DuPont extended its $6 billion takeover bid for Denmark's Danisco by four weeks and said shareholders of 6 percent of Danisco's stock had accepted the offer.

US stocks edged modestly higher in Tuesday’s session as traders eyed Friday’s non-farm payrolls (NFP) report.

Dollar dominance is sowing the seeds of financial turmoil, and the solution is to promote new reserve currencies, a Chinese government economist said in a paper published on the eve of a G20 meeting about how to reform the global monetary system.

Russian Internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies, an investor in social network company Facebook, has joined a group of investors funding hundreds of millions of dollars to 360buy.com, China's largest online retailer, the Financial Times reported.

U.S. apparel brand Gap Inc opened an online store on China's biggest e-commerce platform Taobao on Wednesday, in an effort to lure savvy Chinese shoppers outside wealthy cities.

The parts shortages and resulting production shutdowns caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami could cause the global auto industry to rethink how it sets up its supply lines, a top industry economist said on Tuesday.

This may sound cruel, but the family tragedy of Mao Zedong was the best thing that could have happened to China.

Risks that could lead to a property bubble are still building up in China, and more action is needed to cool speculative fervor, the country's banking regulator said on Tuesday.

Oil prices fell around a dollar on Tuesday in a third day of declines as expectations mounted of a relatively swift restoration of supplies from OPEC member Libya.

Japan has gone into a state of maximum alert after plutonium was found in the soil around the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant and radioactive water leaked from a reactor in the plant.

U.S. stocks gave up modest gains and ended slightly lower as declines from consumer and technology companies’ shares weighed in the final hour of trading session.