UK - British companies have cut more than 24,000 jobs over the past week, after Rolls-Royce, AstraZeneca and BAE Systems this morning added to the growing tally of unemployment.
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders told Detroit's Big Three automakers Thursday that they have until Dec. 2 to submit a plan to Congress on how they will use billions of taxpayer funds to bring their companies from the brink of destruction.
CHICAGO - Conservatives who have abandoned the U.S. Episcopal Church by the thousands in recent years are trying to form a separate-but-equal church, a move that could leave two branches of Anglicanism on American soil.
USA - The U.S. financial system still needs at least $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion of tangible common equity to restore confidence and improve liquidity in the credit markets, Friedman Billings Ramsey analyst Paul Miller said.
VATICAN - Pope Benedict XVI was the first to predict the crisis in the global financial system, a "prophecy" dating to a paper he wrote when he was a cardinal, Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said.
IRAN - According to an article published Thursday in the New York Times, "Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts."
USA - Oil prices have fallen below $50 a barrel for the first time since May 2005 amid fears of a recession and expectations that demand will drop. US light sweet crude fell to $49.06, while London-traded Brent crude fell to $48.90 a barrel.
UK - Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) chairman, Sir Tom McKillop, has said he is "profoundly sorry" for the bank's financial difficulties. Shareholders have voted by 99% in favour of accepting a £20bn ($29.9bn) government bail-out.
UK - "Eurozone membership is still no answer for UK". Martin Wolf argues in his column for the FT that the UK now needs a strong depreciation in the real exchange rate, and that what some consider a sterling crisis is actually good news.
IRELAND - The Irish Independent reports that Libertas Chairman Declan Ganley yesterday told an Irish parliamentary committee: "Let's not have another referendum because if it's 'No' it will probably provoke the collapse of the Government or some senior figures in it."
EUROPE - A new paper by the Transnational Institute argues that the EU is pursuing a "military space policy" via the European Space Agency (ESA), and warns that an increasing "overlap between civilian and military space applications" could lead to a new arms race.
UN - Iran is steadily growing its stockpiles of uranium as the country pushes ahead with its nuclear programme, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said.
UK - Up to four children die each week in England from abuse or neglect, according to official figures that reveal the alarming scale of the problem.
WASHINGTON - A Democratic Congress, unwilling or unable to approve a $25 billion bailout for Detroit's Big Three, appears ready to punt the automakers' fate to a lame-duck Republican president.
WASHINGTON - Cardinal James Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See, delivered a lecture on Thursday saying that the future under President-elect Obama will echo Jesus' agony in Gethsemane. Criticizing Obama as "AGGRESSIVE, DISRUPTIVE AND APOCALYPTIC," he went on to speak about a decline in respect for human life and the NEED FOR CATHOLICS TO RETURN TO THE VALUES OF MARRIAGE AND HUMAN DIGNITY.