Global currency trading rose to $2.7 trillion a day between April and October, the first growth since the six months to April 2008, the Reserve Bank of Australia said, citing data from five markets.

Investors should avoid Spain’s bonds as the euro region’s highest levels of joblessness stifle the country’s ability to cut its budget deficit, according to Invesco Ltd. and Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit.

The people of Torre del Greco, 10 miles south of Naples, have lived off the red corals found in the Mediterranean Sea for more than two millennia. A proposal to list the species as endangered may push the seaside town’s $217 million-a-year coral industry into extinction.

Greece’s unions will shut down hospitals, airports and schools today in the country’s second general strike this year to protest Prime Minister George Papandreou’s latest round of budget cuts to curb the European Union’s biggest deficit.

American International Group Inc. bondholders reaped at least $3.2 billion after the bailed-out company announced deals to sell its two largest non-U.S. life insurance divisions for $51 billion.

Total SA, Europe’s third-largest oil company, said Chinese natural-gas demand will grow much faster than currently projected when more supplies of the heating and power-plant fuel become available. Gas has the potential to become more of a “seller’s market” around 2014 as demand gains wipe out an excess in supplies, Philippe Boisseau, president of Paris-based Total’s gas and power unit, said today at an industry conference in Houston.

U.K. factory production unexpectedly fell in January for the first time in five months, a sign manufacturing is struggling to shake off the nation’s longest recession on record.

French and Italian industrial production jumped in January, signaling the recovery is gaining pace in the euro zone' s second and third largest economies

German exports unexpectedly slumped in January, erasing December’s jump and ending a four-month streak of gains.

Europe should promote spending on infrastructure to deliver natural gas to consumers from new sources of the fuel from Africa, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, Eni SpA Chief Executive Officer Paolo Scaroni said.

First Climate AG said it signed letters of intent with major European utilities to invest in projects that may generate emission credits good after 2012.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said U.S. President Barack Obama expressed support for measures being taken to deal with Greece’s financial crisis.

The average person’s sex life ends by the age of 70, according to a report published today in the British Medical Journal.

Bank of England officials are counting on their 200 billion-pound ($300 billion) bond-purchase program to have succeeded in restoring the economy to growth, policy maker Adam Posen said.

British Airways Plc’s chances of avoiding a cabin-crew strike after the end of talks today are no better than even, a union said, while Deutsche Lufthansa AG pilots pledged to carry on negotiating beyond a deadline.

Though Europe opened railroad competition Jan. 1, no rivals have emerged for the Anglo-French Eurostar. But its problems in 2009 may open the door for Deutsche Bahn

Daimler AG’s sale of Tata Motors Ltd. shares will cushion the maker of Mercedes-Benz cars from a hit on earnings at European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co.

Greek tax increases designed to curb the European Union’s biggest budget deficit may fail to generate as much additional revenue as the government in Athens estimates, a draft EU report said.

The CEO of Airbus parent EADS says there's no turning back now that partner Northrop has decided not to bid on the $35 billion U.S. Air Force refueling tanker contract

Joined by fellow EU officials, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for urgent regulation of "speculative" derivatives trading to prevent another Greek-type crisis