USA - Investors should prepare themselves for a third round of quantitative easing, Simon Maughn, co-head of European equities at MF Global, told CNBC Wednesday. "The bond market is going in one direction which is up - falling yields which is telling you quite clearly the direction of economic travel is downwards."
NATO - Nato has extended its mission in Libya by a further 90 days. The extension was unanimously agreed by the ambassadors of Nato's 28 member states meeting in Brussels. "We are determined to continue our operation to protect the people of Libya," said Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
USA - Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management's emerging markets group, said another financial crisis is inevitable because the causes of the previous one haven't been resolved.
USA - US house prices have fallen to fresh lows, according to a widely-watched report that managed to stand out among a blitz of worrying data for the world's biggest economy. Average home prices slumped 5.1 per cent in the first quarter of the year from the same period in 2010, the latest report from the S&P Case-Shiller index showed yesterday.
UK - The Ministry of Defence is spending 26 million pounds renting a ship from Norway which will be used by the Royal Navy, it has confirmed. The ice-breaker MV Polarbjorn will be renamed the HMS Protector when it is commissioned into the Navy on June 23.
UK - The Bank of England is in danger losing its credibility, the outgoing Monetary Policy Committee member Andrew Sentance has told Sky News. In an exclusive interview on Jeff Randall Live, Mr Sentance said he was concerned that the British public is losing faith in the Bank's ability to reign in soaring inflation.
ASIA - Factory growth slowed in major Asian countries, surveys released on Wednesday showed, feeding concerns that the world's strongest economic engines are cooling down as the United States and Europe curtail orders.
AUSTRALIA - Australia has reported its biggest quarterly fall in gross domestic product (GDP) in 20 years. Its economy contracted by 1.2% in the first three months of the year compared with the previous quarter, the latest government figures showed. Australia's economy is heavily reliant on exporting its natural resources.
USA - Congress is under pressure to cut the rapidly rising costs of the federal government's food stamps program at a time when a record number of Americans are relying on it. A record number of Americans - about 14 percent - now rely on the federal government's food stamps program and its rapid expansion in recent years has become a politically explosive topic.
CHINA - The drought gripping stretches of central and eastern China has dried Lake Honghu into an expanse of exposed mud, stranded boats and dying fish farms, threatening the livelihoods of residents in Hubei Province who call this their "land of fish and rice." Dry spells and floods blight various parts of China nearly every year, and officials are prone to call each the worst in 50 years or longer.
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above. At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab.
WASHINGTON, USA - The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the US to respond using traditional military force.
The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to US nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military.
ISRAEL - Vice Prime Minister and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon says the civilized world must take joint action to avert the Iranian nuclear threat, including a pre-emptive strike if necessary. The former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff made the statement Monday in an interview with Russia's Interfax news agency ahead of a visit to Moscow.
ISRAEL - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that no one can prevent the recognition of a Palestinian state in the United Nations in September. "No one has the power to stop the decision to recognize a Palestinian state in the UN General Assembly in September," Netanyahu said. "It can also be possible to make the decision there that the world is flat."
EUROPE - Reports that Greece has not met any of the fiscal targets set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) as part of its 110 billion euros ($157 billion) bailout knocked down the euro Monday, as other countries in the euro zone are threatened with being dragged into the Greek morass.