
The United States Federal Reserve left its key interest rate near 0% once again Tuesday and said rates should stay this low for the foreseeable future. In its release the Federal Open Market Committee, FOMC, policymakers repeated their prediction that economic conditions are likely to result in exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period.

Brazil’s government managed oil company Petrobras will issue as much as 60 billion US dollars of new stock, most of which will go to the government in exchange for oil rights, Energy Minister Edison Lobao announced Tuesday.

The European Commission will call on Britain to do more to cut the budget deficit, according to a draft document. The EU executive is also expected to say the UK's medium term plans are not ambitious enough. The report will see the light just weeks before a general election is expected to be announced.

Europe's finance ministers agreed Monday how to help Greece in its battle to control its finances. After a meeting in Brussels, they revealed few details, except that they had ruled out any loan guarantees.

Rio Tinto Alcan, a unit of global mining giant Rio Tinto formally presented on Monday plans to invest 2.5 billion US dollars in an aluminium smelter in Paraguay, according to corporation and Asuncion sources.

British Airways says 60% of its customers will be able to keep their travel plans during planned strikes by cabin crew. Industrial action is set to begin with a three-day walkout from Saturday March 20, followed by a four-day stoppage from Saturday March 27.

Unemployment threatens to hamper the UK economic recovery as worried households cut back on spending, the Bank of England has warned. The latest quarterly bulletin said there was a risk of rising dole queues if “the recovery in demand proves more sluggish than businesses have expected”.

Former bosses at Lehman Brothers have been accused of using an accounting gimmick to hide billions in losses which helped bring about its collapse. The technique, called Repo 105, was used to temporarily remove 50 billion US dollars of assets from the US investment bank's balance sheet in 2008, according to a one-year investigation.

The United States should not make a political issue out of the Yuan, a Chinese central banker said as the long running friction between the world’s two leading economies approaches a critical deadline.

The Falkland Islands economy is expected to expand by 5.3% in real terms during 2010, following a period of contraction in 2009, which was caused primarily by a poor fish harvest rather than the immediate effects of the global recession, according to the Economic Briefing & Forecast released by the Falklands’ government.