GERMANY

Ford Motor Co plans to invest 4 billion reais ($2.26 billion) in Brazil to boost output as record-low borrowing costs and a recovery in Latin America's largest economy stoke demand for new cars, Mark Fields, the company's president for the Americas, said on Friday.

Herman Van Rompuy's appointment as the first European Union president provoked fears in Turkey that he might hinder Ankara's hopes of joining the bloc, with some media declaring outright that he is anti-Turkish.

Deutsche Telekom is keeping its options open for its U.S. business and is not close to making a decision on the unit's mid-tem future, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Ford Motor Co plans to invest 2 billion reais ($1.15 billion) in Brazil through 2015, most of it on a plant in the northeastern Bahia state, to expand production and benefit from expected growth in Latin America's largest economy, the state governor said on BandNews radio on Friday.

Banks risk becoming addicted to cheap central bank cash used to fight the financial crisis and must prepare for its eventual withdrawal, the head of the ECB warned at a Frankfurt banking conference on Friday.

U.S. carmaker General Motors will present a new viability plan for Opel in mid-December as it aims to reduce capacity across Europe by about 20 percent, a top executive said on Thursday.

Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker, raised hopes the 90,000 workers in its high-wage western German plants could extend their job guarantees a further three years until 2014, a senior executive told Reuters.

Phoenix Solar AG, one of Europe's largest solar power developers, is in talks to partner with a Chinese firm to push its business in China, said a company executive.

Britain's small wind sector is booming despite the recession as many rural homes, farms or small business are putting up turbines in the yard to counter higher energy prices and blackouts.

Bon Jovi claimed its fourth No. 1 album on the U.S. pop chart Wednesday, despite a sharp drop in sales.

European shares were down on Thursday, set to fall for a third consecutive session, as banking stocks weighed, while food producers also fell after Danone (DANO.PA) cut its sales growth target.

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Thursday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 0.61 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.51 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures down 0.44 percent at 1030 GMT (5:30 a.m. EST).

Chinese photovoltaic cell maker Solarfun Power Holdings Co Ltd reported a third-quarter profit that beat analysts estimates, helped by higher shipment volumes, sending its shares up 8 percent.

Russian oil company TNK-BP is looking at acquisitions or joint ventures as a means of growing in the oil refining sector, a senior company executive said on Wednesday.

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India's Suzlon Energy said on Wednesday its German unit REpower Systems has signed a contract to supply wind turbines with a total capacity of 18.45 megawatts to U.S. firm Heritage Sustainable Energy LLC.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday next month's climate talks in Copenhagen should cut a deal with immediate operational effect, even if its original aim of a legally binding pact is not achievable.

Recent economic data from some of the world's largest industrial regions suggests that the world may be moving towards growth, however the largely government manufactured recovery leaves open the question as to whether recovery can be sustainable.

Germany's Bundesbank urged banks to use a markets recovery to restructure and prevent a rerun of the financial crisis even as Deutsche Bank's chief called for a common bailout fund with taxpayer backing.

Microsoft is launching its Zune media brand outside the US for the first time, a move to grab shares from the dominating Apple iTune after failure to compete with iPod.

Criminal gangs are making millions of dollars out of the H1N1 flu pandemic by selling fake flu drugs over the internet, a web security firm said on Monday.