EUROPEAN UNION

Finance chiefs of the Group of Seven leading industrialized powers will hold emergency talks on the euro zone debt crisis on Tuesday in a sign of heightened global alarm about strains in the 17-nation European currency area.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is expected to be pressured on the Syrian crisis when he meets with European leaders in St. Petersburg on Monday.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy proposed on Saturday that the 17 countries in the euro zone create a common fiscal authority, with each surrendering a significant amount of its national sovereignty to send a signal to financial markets about the certainty of their single-currency experiment.

The recent discoveries of gas in the eastern Mediterranean creates a whole new energy paradigm for two nations -- Cyprus and Israel -- which formerly were believed to possess no natural resources at all. Their subsequent alliance has further upset the geopolitical balance in the Near East.

Some 110,000 people were added to the unemployment rolls of the 17-nation euro zone in April, the statistical office of the European Union reported Friday, once again setting a record high, as every country in the common currency agreement save for Austria, Germany and Ireland reported a deteriorating labor condition. The unemployment rate held steady at 11 percent.

Yesterday morning the Chicago PMI Data came in quite weak with a reading of 52.7 versus and expectation of 56.7.

Those who order, help or fail to stop attacks on civilians are individually criminally liable for their actions, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said in Geneva.

The value of the monetary unit of China dropped against the world's reserve currency on Tuesday

The euro shot lower yesterday, trading with a 1.23 handle as the market digested news that eight Danish banks had been downgraded.

Facing what seem to be minute-by-minute rejections of various bailout scenarios, Spanish bank Bankia S.A. -- the country's fourth-largest financial institution, which is currently embroiled in a crisis of insolvency -- is putting its faith in the web-shooting hands of a Marvel Comics superhero, Spider-Man.

Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen said in Washington on Wednesday that he will travel to Moscow in the very near future.

A history of the Russia-Syria military relationship, starting with the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

The European Union recommended Wednesday that the 17 countries of the euro common currency union create and fund a banking union for bailing out insolvent banks, preventing the fiscal and political stresses such moves have on individual national governments. The union would be funded by the European Stability Mechanism, one of the EU's standing bailout funds.

She had spent 15 of the past 24 years under house arrest and refrained from leaving the country out of fear she would never be permitted to return.

U.S. investors came back from a long holiday weekend Tuesday to news of Spain's government aiming to stave off an apparently imminent collapse of nationalized financier Bankia S.A. -- the country's fourth-largest bank -- with a ?19 billon ($23.8 billion) capital injection.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, having so far successfully fought off the idea of euro bonds, is besieged on all sides as leaders line up behind French President Francois Hollande and his appeals for the collective financial instrument.

Greece's conservatives have regained an opinion-poll lead that could foreshadow the formation of a pro-bailout government committed to keeping the country in the euro zone, a batch of new surveys showed on Saturday.

The contemplated union of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain forms only one part of a potentially much wider alliance -- the political, military and economic integration of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which comprise Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman.

The European Union has filed a suit with the World Trade Organization against Argentina?s import restrictions, raising the dispute between the EU and the South American nation only weeks after Buenos Aires nationalized Spanish oil firm Repsol?s subsidiary in the country.

Moving swiftly from the realm of tin foil-hat conspiracy to a bullet point being openly talked about as a fait accompli by international financiers, an exit by Greece from the European common currency dominated conversation this week. But what would actually happen if Greece left the euro?

Investors are increasingly making a flight to quality as they pull out of credit-default swaps hedges on Europe's primary index as well as the markets for periphery nations like Spain, a trend which indicates higher expectations that periphery nations are unable to repay their debts and a lack of confidence in the political will of the economic union.