
Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA ordered 222 Boeing Co. and Airbus SAS airliners valued at 127 billion Kroner (21.5 billion dollars) as Europe's fourth-biggest discount carrier steps up its competition with state-backed SAS AB.

The UK will not negotiate the Falklands/Malvinas Islands sovereignty “until the Islander so wish to” said on Wednesday a spokesperson from the Foreign Office.

The Falkland Islands urged the EU Commission to ensure that the rights of citizens of Overseas Counties and Territories are not compromised in relations with countries and regional bodies.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to business leaders at the World Economic Forum to give policy makers the space they need to tackle the debt crisis, pledging that Europe will pull together and restore confidence.

The captain of the doomed Italian liner Costa Concordia said he was told by managers to take his ship close in to shore on the night it ran aground and capsized, according to bugged conversations leaked in Italian newspapers.

Greece's public sector creditors may need to participate in a restructuring of its debt if a haircut negotiated with private sector bondholders is not enough to make Athens' debt sustainable, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said.

“This joke is over” Jose Garcia-Margallo, Spanish Foreign Minister told his British counterpart William Hague this week regarding the Gibraltar sovereignty dispute.

Greece's sovereign debt restructuring appears to be following the footsteps of Argentina's disorderly debt default of 2002, a creditor that is participating in the negotiations warned this week.

Agriculture is part of the solution to the world's environmental challenge and must play a key role at next June's Rio summit on sustainable development, the Brazilian head of the UN food agency said this week.

Thousands of trade unionists, students and activists for indigenous and environmental causes gathered Tuesday in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre to kick off debate in the anti-capitalist World Social Forum.