INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will thrash out differences with French President Nicolas Sarkozy Sunday over how to use the Eurozone's financial firepower to counter a sovereign debt crisis threatening the global economy.

The Vancouver housing market is attracting unusually strong demand but Canada as a whole does not face a housing bubble that requires government action, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Wednesday.

Airliners were grounded, trains halted and tax offices shut on Wednesday as Greek state workers walked off the job to protest against austerity, defying a plea by the government to rally behind its effort to fend off national bankruptcy.

Greece's admission that it will miss its deficit targets this year and next despite harsh new austerity measures sent stock markets reeling on Monday and raised new doubts over a planned second international bailout.

Greece will miss a deficit target set just months ago in a massive bailout package, according to government draft budget figures released on Sunday, showing that drastic steps taken to avert bankruptcy may not be enough.

Greece will most likely receive the next tranche of the EU/IMF bailout loan in October, Austria's Finance Minister Maria Fekter was quoted telling German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Sunday.

Greece was expected to unveil its plan on Sunday to begin laying off state workers, the most contentious part of a reform package demanded by the EU and IMF to free up loans and stave off bankruptcy.

Greek officials held talks on Saturday with European Union and International Monetary Fund negotiators to free up urgently needed bailout loans, but the government and the lenders were reported to be at odds.

Germany's parliament approved new powers for the euro zone's crisis fund on Thursday but it was not clear if Angela Merkel got enough votes from her coalition to silence rebels worried about funding a series of bailouts of countries like Greece.