Global Economy, Europe Debt | featured news

The Italian austerity budget worth nearly 48 billion euros was approved by the upper house of parliament on Thursday, overcoming its first parliamentary hurdle.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has called an emergency meeting of top officials dealing with the euro zone debt crisis for Monday morning, reelecting concern that the crisis could spread to Italy, the region's third largest economy.

Thousands of South Asian migrants have left Greece in recent months to escape the country's growing economic crisis, community leaders tell the BBC.

Austerity measures being adopted by many industrialized world governments in the wake of the 2008-09 financial crisis are undermining economic recovery, a United Nations report said on Wednesday.

If the U.S. economic slowdown weren't enough to deal with, the Federal Reserve this week must consider a new threat: a resurgent European debt crisis that could imperil the global economy.

Eurozone finance ministers meet in Luxembourg, where they are expected to approve a 12bn-euro (£10bn) loan to debt-stricken Greece.

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that Europe's debt crisis must be contained.

Portugal will elect a new government on Sunday which will lead the country through a period of deep austerity and recession after it received a 78-billion-euro ($114 billion) bailout from the European Union and IMF.

Fueling the demonstrators’ anger is the perceived failure by politicians to alleviate the hardships imposed on a struggling population by a jobless rate of 21 percent.

Euro zone finance ministers are ready to back an EU/IMF bailout of Portugal at a Monday meeting overshadowed by the arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges.