PARIS (AP) ― European youths still face rising joblessness at a rate far higher than their American counterparts ― but European leaders insisted Tuesday that scenario is going to improve over the next two years.Leaders from 24 European nations as well as labor ministers and European Union officials met Tuesday in Paris to talk about youth unemployment. They announced no new programs but many expressed confidence that plans now in place will reverse the rising joblessness for the under-25 set ove

NEW DELHI (AFP) ― U.S. soft drinks giant PepsiCo announced Monday it would invest over $5 billion with its partners in India to raise production, saying it had only “scratched the surface” of the Asian giant’s potential.In further welcome news for India’s Congress government as it struggles to woo foreign investment with economic growth at a decade low, British retail giant Marks & Spencer said it aimed to more than double its stores in India to 80 by 2016.PepsiCo, the world’s second-largest bev

BRUSSELS (AFP) ― France’s fiscal policy has “reached the limits of acceptability,” with high company taxes weighing on growth, the head of the European Commission told French television late Monday.Even though France’s proposed budget is “overall satisfactory,” Jose Manuel Barroso told the LCI network: “Today, the fiscal policy in France has reached the limits of acceptability.“France is by far the country (in the EU) where companies pay the highest taxes and that’s a problem for growth and empl

Salaries for banks’ risk and compliance officers in Singapore and Hong Kong rose at about twice the pace of pay for similar positions at New York and London firms amid a shortage of skilled staff members, a recruiter said. Pay excluding bonuses for people who changed jobs in the Asian cities rose as much as 20 percent this year, compared with 10 percent in the Western hubs, said Neil Owen, a director for Robert Half International Inc. in London. A senior official in Singapore is paid as much as

China’s industrial output growth unexpectedly accelerated and inflation stayed below a government target, providing a boost to Communist Party leaders meeting in Beijing to chart the economy’s course for coming years. Production rose 10.3 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Saturday, exceeding the 10 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists and the previous month’s 10.2 percent. Inflation was a less-than-forecast 3.2 percent and producer pr

NEW YORK (AP) ― Twitter’s stock slid more than 7 percent on its second trading day Friday, after the popular short messaging service saw a huge first-day pop in what turned out to be a smooth public debut.Such volatile trading is common for freshly public stocks as investors make decisions with limited insight into how well companies will do in the long run. Although there are a few outliers, most analysts believe the appropriate price range for Twitter’s stock is in the $30s and low $40s. The m

Central banks around the world renewed efforts this week to reflate their economies as slowing prices emerge as a threat to global prosperity. A day after the European Central Bank unexpectedly halved its benchmark interest rate to a record-low 0.25 percent and Peru cut its main rate for the first time in four years, the Czech central bank yesterday intervened in currency markets. The Reserve Bank of Australia Friday left open the chance of cheaper borrowing costs by forecasting below-trend econ

NEW YORK (AP) ― Federal prosecutors want Bank of America Corp. pay about $864 million over losses incurred by the government after it bought thousands of home loans made by Countrywide Financial during the housing boom. U.S. attorney Preet Bharara made the request in documents filed late Friday with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. A jury last month found Bank of America Corp., which acquired Countrywide in 2008, liable for knowingly selling thousands of bad home loans to Fannie Mae and Fre