EU warns Spain and Italy over their budget
The European Commission, the European Union's executive arm, has warned Spain and Italy that their draft budgets for 2014 may not comply with new debt and deficit rules.
It also said French and Dutch plans only just passed muster.
Non-complying countries may have to revise their tax and spending plans before re-submitting them to national parliaments.
It is the first time the Commission has done this.
Under EU rules, eurozone member states are obliged to cut deficits until they achieve a balanced budget. They also have to reduce public debt levels.
The Commission gives countries some flexibility if their deficit is below the EU ceiling of 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) and their debt levels are falling.
But when Italy, the eurozone's third largest economy, asked for such leniency over its 2014 budget plans, the Commission refused because its public debt was still rising.
France, whose economy shrank in the third quarter, has taken steps to cut its deficit to below the 3% threshold, but its structural reform plans were only making "limited progress", the Commission said.
The country had "no margin" for error in reducing its public deficit, the executive warned.
Spain's draft 2014 spending plans were "at risk of non-compliance", said the Commission, as the country does not envisage returning to EU financial norms until 2016 at the earliest.
Other countries at risk of breaking EU finance rules included Finland, Luxembourg and Malta.
The countries coming under the Commission's "budgetary surveillance" are Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.
Those heavily indebted countries that received EU bail-outs at the height of the financial crisis - Ireland, Cyprus, Portugal and Greece - were not included in the review.
On Thursday, official figures showed that the eurozone economy grew by just 0.1% in the July-to-September period, down from 0.3% growth in the previous quarter.
The European Central Bank (ECB) last week cut its benchmark interest rate to 0.25% in an attempt to give some impetus to the fragile recovery.
Meanwhile, the annual rate of inflation across the eurozone fell to 0.7% in October, the lowest level for four years in the 17-country currency area, the EU's statistics agency Eurostat said, confirming an earlier estimate.
This compared to a rate of 1.1% in September. The ECB's target rate is just under 2%.
The October figures revealed a sharp divergence between countries, with Germany's 1.2% contrasting with Spain's 0%.
EnQuest cleared to develop £4bn Kraken oil field
A £4bn investment in a major oil field off Shetland has been given the go-ahead.
The Kraken field, which is estimated to contain nearly 140m barrels of oil, is majority-owned by Aberdeen-based EnQuest.
The construction phase of the project is expected to support 20,000 jobs.
EnQuest also expects to take on an average of about 1,000 operational jobs in the UK for each year of Kraken's 25-year life.
The development, which was approved by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, is the largest investment announced in the UK North Sea this year.
Kraken's two heavy oil fields will receive tax allowances introduced by the UK government in a bid to stimulate investment in the sector.
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said: "This is a big investment that will create jobs and boost the British economic plan.
"It is also evidence that our efforts to create a competitive tax regime that gets the most oil and gas out of the North Sea are working."
Scottish Energy Minister Fergus Ewing also welcomed the announcement.
He said: "I had the pleasure of meeting with EnQuest in September this year and I warmly welcome this announcement of £4bn investment in the Kraken field east of Shetland and the job creation and supply chain opportunities it will bring.
"This follows on from a host of significant investment announcements recently - unequivocal evidence of the faith that the oil and gas industry has in the future of the North Sea as an oil producing province."
Former President Wins Chilean Vote; Faces Runoff
Former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet won nearly twice as many votes as her closest rival in Chile's presidential election Sunday, but she fell short of the outright majority needed to avoid a December 15 runoff.
The moderate socialist had nearly 47 percent of the vote, to 25 percent for conservative Evelyn Matthei.
Ms. Bachelet left office with an 84-percent approval rating after her 2006-2010 presidency. Chile allows presidents to serve more than one term, but not consecutively.
Ms. Bachelet is backed by her New Majority alliance of socialists, Christian Democrats and communists.
She has pledged to narrow the country's wage income gap and revise the constitution, which dates back to the 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
All 120 lower house seats and 20 out of 38 Senate seats were also being contested. Ms. Bachelet's coalition had 51 percent in the Senate and 48 percent in the lower chamber.
Aquino Vows to Stay in Typhoon-Hit Central Philippines
Philippine President Benigno Aquino has vowed to stay in the typhoon-battered center of the country until he is satisfied with efforts to help survivors of a devastating November 8 storm.
Mr. Aquino made the pledge Sunday as he visited the hard-hit central islands of Samar and Leyte, where thousands of people flocked to ruined churches for weekly prayers. Some gave thanks for surviving Super Typhoon Haiyan, while others prayed for the souls of the thousands of people who were killed.
Sunday services typically are a time of reflection in the Philippines, whose population is 80 percent Roman Catholic.
The pace of international aid deliveries to the typhoon zone also gained momentum. U.S. military helicopters brought food to remote areas and were mobbed by hungry and thankful residents.
The Philippine government says the typhoon killed at least 3,974 people and left about 1,200 others missing. Many of them were swept away and drowned in a huge storm surge triggered by one of the strongest cyclones on record to make landfall anywhere in the world.
Syria Rebels Bomb Government Building, Kill 31 – Report
Syria monitors say rebels bombed a government building near Damascus on Sunday, killing 31.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the building was destroyed. A spokesman tells the French News Agency that three generals and a brigadier general are among the dead.
The group also says Syrian forces launched a second straight day of air raids on the town of Qara in the mountainous Qalamoun region, close to the Lebanese border.
That region has the few remaining rebel supply lines between Syria and the outside world. But the bombings have forced several thousand Syrians to seek refuge in Lebanon, overwhelming small towns that cannot handle such a crisis.
Hollande to Israel: France Will Keep Sanctions on Iran
French President Francois Hollande says his government will maintain sanctions and pressure against Iran until he is certain that it has renounced a suspected nuclear weapons program.
Hollande made the pledge to Israeli leaders after arriving in Israel Sunday at the start of a three-day visit. In a welcome ceremony at the airport, the French president said Paris will not tolerate nuclear proliferation. Speaking in Hebrew, Hollande also said, "I will always remain a friend of Israel."
Israel has been urging France and five other world powers not to ease sanctions on Iran as they negotiate with the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who took office in August. Israeli leaders see a nuclear armed Iran as a threat to their nation's existence. Tehran has repeatedly called for Israel's demise.
The six world powers, known as the P5+1, held a second round of talks with the Rouhani government in Geneva earlier this month, hoping to reach a diplomatic solution to international concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program. Another round is due to begin in Geneva Wednesday.
Iran has demanded relief from sanctions that have hurt its economy, but has refused to stop uranium enrichment, a process with civilian and military uses.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly warned against easing pressure on Iran without forcing it to give up uranium enrichment. Speaking Sunday at a joint news conference with Hollande, the Israeli prime minister said such a concession would be a "dream deal" for Iran and the "worst nightmare" for the world.
In a report published Sunday, the Iranian news agency ISNA quoted Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as saying Iran does need other countries to explicitly "recognize" an Iranian right to enrich uranium. Zarif said enrichment already is a fundamental right that "all countries should respect."
France has said it opposes any deal that would do too little to curb Iran's enrichment or to stop its development of a reactor capable of producing plutonium, another nuclear weapons ingredient.
Western powers accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the guise of civilian energy and medical research, a charge Tehran denies.
Russia Plane Crash Kills 50
A Boeing 737 airliner crashed on Sunday in the Russian city of Kazan, killing all 50 people on board and spotlighting the poor safety record of regional airlines that ply internal routes across the world's largest nation.
The son of the president of the oil-rich province of Tatarstan and the regional head of the FSB intelligence service were named among those killed when the plane exploded in a ball of fire on hitting the runway.
Pictures showed charred wreckage scattered over a wide area, apparently taken after firefighters had extinguished the fire. Russian television broadcast a blurred video showing a bright flash of light. It also published a photo of the plane's gaping fuselage with firefighters in the foreground.
The Tatarstan airlines flight from Moscow had been trying to abort its landing in order to make a second approach when it crashed, killing all 44 passengers and six crew on board, emergency officials said.
Flight U363 took off from Moscow's Domodedovo airport at 6:25 pm (1425 GMT) and crashed just over an hour later, emergency officials said. The leased plane was 23 years old.
According to local reports, the Boeing lost altitude quickly and its fuel tank exploded on impact.
There were high winds and above-zero temperatures over the airport in central Russia. Flights to and from the airport were halted until midday on Monday.
Kazan, which is some 800 kilometers east of Moscow, is the capital of the largely-Muslim, oil-rich region of Tatarstan. A new runway was built at the airport ahead of the World Student Games, held in the city earlier this year.
Russia will host the Winter Olympics in the southern city of Sochi early next year.
The son of Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov, Irek, was among those killed in the crash, as was the head of the regional Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Antonov, according to a passenger list whose authenticity was confirmed by the regional government.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called the disaster “a frightening tragedy,” offering his condolences to the relatives of the victims in a tweet on Sunday.
Nobel Winning Author Doris Lessing Dies
Nobel prize winning British author Doris Lessing has died at the age of 94 in London.
Best known for the 1962 novel "The Golden Notebook," which today is considered a landmark feminist work, Lessing became the oldest winner of the Nobel Prize in 2007, just short of her 88th birthday.
Lessing wrote more than 50 other works ranging from political critiques to science fiction, many of them inspired by her experiences of a lonely childhood in Africa and involvement in radical leftist politics.
The cause of her death was not disclosed.
Starbucks to pay $3bn in row over packaged coffee
An independent US arbitrator has told Starbucks to pay $2.76bn (£1.74bn) in damages and other costs to Kraft Foods in a dispute over packaged coffee.
Kraft began selling bags of Starbucks branded coffee in 1998 under a deal that was due to run until March 2014.
But the US coffee chain ended the contract in 2010, accusing Kraft of breaking the terms of their deal.
Kraft challenged that move by starting arbitration proceedings saying it had built a business worth $500m a year.
On Tuesday the arbitrator ruled that Starbucks must $2.23bn in damages plus $527m in interest and legal costs.
Kraft Foods was spun off by Mondelez International last year and under an agreement between those two firms the payments from the case will go to Mondelez.
"We're pleased that the arbitrator validated our position that Starbucks breached our successful and long-standing contractual relationship without proper compensation," said Mondelez.
In a statement Starbucks said it "strongly disagreed" with the conclusions of the arbitrator.
"We believe Kraft did not deliver on its responsibilities to our brand under the agreement, the performance of the business suffered as a result, and that we had a right to terminate the agreement without payment to Kraft," it said.
American Airlines and US Airways settle merger suit
American Airlines and US Airways have settled an anti-trust suit with US regulators, paving the way for their proposed merger to be finalised.
The merger would create the world's largest airline.
As part of the agreement, which must still be approved by a judge, the airlines will give up slots at several US airports.
The two companies argued the consolidation was necessary to their survival.
The US Justice Department had sued to stop the $11bn (£6.9bn) merger in August, arguing it would reduce competition and result in higher prices for consumers.
"This agreement has the potential to shift the landscape of the airline industry...[and] ensures airline passengers will see more competition on nonstop and connecting routes throughout the country," said Attorney General Eric Holder in a statement.
The two airlines will each give up 57 slots to low-cost carrier airlines at Ronald Reagan International Airport in Washington DC and 34 slots at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in New York City.
The companies say this will result in 44 fewer daily departures at Reagan and 12 fewer daily departures at LGA - a fraction of the close to 400 daily flights that the airlines operate from those two airports.
"They dominated Reagan Airport, that's why they had the Department of Justice concerned," Ray Neidl, an airline analyst at Nexa Capital, told the BBC, who said that giving up slots at the airport was an unsurprising part of the agreement.
"It was better than litigating," he added.
An additional two slots each at Boston Logan International, Chicago O'Hare International, Dallas Love Field, Los Angeles International and Miami International airports will be released.
The slots will be given to low cost airlines like JetBlue and Southwest.
"This agreement allows us to take the final steps in creating the new American Airlines," said Tom Horton, head of American Airline's parent corporation, AMR, in a statement.
The company now says it expects the merger to be finalised in December 2013.
Source-BBC