
Michel Barnier, the European commissioner in charge of financial regulation, is expected to bring forward changes to his market abuse directive and regulation within in the next weeks, the Financial Times said on Monday.

The deputy governor of the Bank of England (BoE) has said he did not give Barclays instructions to lower its Libor submissions in 2008. Paul Tucker said no government minister had asked him to lean on Barclays over its inter-bank lending rates. But he also told MPs that the BoE and the government feared that Barclays may need a bailout.

Hong Kong's Honbridge Holdings Ltd plans to build a 420-kilometre pipeline to ship iron-ore from a mine in Brazil's Minas Gerais state to a port on the country's Atlantic coast, the Estado de Minas newspaper reported.

The leaders of France and Germany joined in a symbolic celebration of unity, hailing a relationship that has brought peace to Europe for 50 years but must now prove it can survive its most serious crisis to date.

A survey by the leading Spanish think tank Real Instituto Elcano has found that nearly 60% of those polled believe Gibraltar is of little or no importance to Spanish foreign policy.

Italy's government has agreed to cut spending by 26bn Euros over the next three years to plug the gap between spending and income. The cuts, approved after seven hours of talks, include a 10% reduction in the number of civil servants and cuts to healthcare and come as Italy struggles to keep the faith of investors.

The United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has confirmed that it has formally launched an investigation into the rigging of inter-bank lending rates. The case could lead to criminal charges being brought against individuals.

China’s consumer-price inflation eased to a 29-month low in June, giving Premier Wen Jiabao more room to relax economic policies after the second interest-rate cut in a month. The consumer price index rose 2.2% percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said in Beijing. Producer prices dropped 2.1%.

The Euro crisis is the “greatest external economic risk” for Latinamerica warned the Inter American Development Bank Luis Alberto Moreno who nevertheless said he was convinced the world with end acknowledging the efforts from the European Union and Spain.

French investigators say faulty sensors and inadequate pilot training caused Air France's Rio-to-Paris 447 flight to crash into the Atlantic in 2009. Their final report caps a bitter row between the airline and Airbus.