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Japan’s industrial production expanded for a second straight month in December, as strengthening global demand injected companies with renewed confidence.
Factory output rose 3.1 percent from November, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said Monday. Driving the gains were export-reliant industries including transport equipment, electronic devices and steel.
Monday’s figure beat Kyodo news agency’s average market […]

Somalia’s government decided on Thursday to cancel an agreement with a private security company linked to the founder of Blackwater Worldwide to train Somali forces to go after pirates and insurgents, a senior official said.
Deputy Security Minister Ibrahim Mohamed Yarow told The Associated Press that the Cabinet, meeting behind closed doors, ended the agreement with […]

After a decade of multibillion-dollar losses, U.S. airlines appear likely to profit for years for a simple reason: They are flying less.
By grounding planes and eliminating flights, airlines have cut costs and pushed fares higher. As the global economy rebounds, travel demand is rising and planes are as full as they’ve been in decades.
Profit margins […]

WASHINGTON

John Lewis Partnership Plc said weekly sales at its U.K. department stores rose 30.6 percent to 97.1 million pounds in the period ending Dec. 25 compared with last year.
Online sales on Christmas Day increased by 45 percent, the company said in an e-mailed statement today bad credit payday advance.
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(Corrects first paragraph to say Italy is euro region’s third-biggest economy.)
Italy’s unemployment rate declined in the three months through September from near the highest since 2003 as the euro region’s third-biggest economy expanded for a third quarter.
Joblessness fell to a seasonally adjusted 8.3 percent, from a revised 8.4 percent, statistics institute Istat said […]

U.K. manufacturing expanded twice as much as economists forecast in October, a sign the recovery is maintaining momentum into the final quarter of the year.
Output rose 0.6 percent from September, the most in seven months, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The median forecast of 23 economists in a Bloomberg News […]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hit back on Friday at critics of the U.S. central bank’s bond-buying program and issued a thinly veiled attack on China’s policy of keeping its currency on a leash.
Bernanke, facing a chorus of protests about the asset-buying spree from within and outside the central bank, said a more vigorous […]

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren said he expects the central bank to buy the entire $600 billion of Treasuries policy makers authorized Nov. 3 in a bid to reduce unemployment.
“Given my forecast, I fully anticipate we will purchase the entire amount,” Rosengren, 53, said today in an interview with Bloomberg News. […]

Regulators have shut down two banks in Georgia and one in Arizona, bringing to 146 the number of U.S. banks that have succumbed this year under the burden of bad loans and a tepid economy.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday took over the two Georgia banks: Darby Bank & Trust Co., based in Vidalia, […]