Eurozone finance ministers agreed Tuesday to offer Spain 30 billion euros this month to help its distressed banks as they raced to stay ahead of market skepticism.
After nine hours of talks, Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg premier who also heads the Euro group , said a memorandum of understanding for Spain would be formally signed "in the second half of July," with 30 billion euros ($37 billion) available by the end of the month.
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IMF chief Christine Lagarde said Tuesday that signs of increased protectionism amid deteriorating global economic conditions were "alarming", and warned such measures affect everyone.
"The latest report by the WTO (World Trade Organization) is quite alarming because there is a rise of protectionism," she said at a business forum in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
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Eurozone finance ministers will oblige Spain's battered banks to further boost the share of rock-solid core capital on their books at a meeting Monday, the daily El Pais said.
"All Spanish entities will have to raise their high quality 'core capital' to nine percent," the daily said, citing European sources with knowledge of the negotiations.
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Italy's economy will shrink by around two percent this year, the head of the Italian central bank said Sunday, as he called for adopting a "new Italian spirit" to tackle the Eurozone debt crisis.
"Consensus forecasts indicate the GDP (gross domestic product) will shrink around 2.0 percent," Ignazio Visco said in an interview with the Corriere della Sera, revising down an earlier forecast.
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Kuwait's Zain telecom said Sunday its Iraqi unit has been fined $12,877 a day since September 1 for failing to list on the bourse but will seek to have the penalty that has reached $4 million scrapped.
"Iraq Zain has received a notification from the Communications and Media Commission stipulating a fine of $12,887 a day for delaying the listing of the company on Iraq Stock Exchange," Zain said in a statement.
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Boeing is set to steal a march over European rival Airbus at the Farnborough airshow which starts Monday, with the U.S. plane maker set to secure significant orders for its 737 MAX jet.
Boeing, which is lagging behind Airbus' in the short-haul plane market owing to big orders for the latter's new fuel-efficient A320neo, is expected to hit back at the biennial Farnborough event near London, analysts said.
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Iraqi Kurdistan has begun sending oil produced in its three-province autonomous region out of the country without the express permission of the central government, an official said on Sunday.
The central government in Baghdad, meanwhile, insisted that it reserved the sole right to export oil, which accounts for the lion's share of the country's income and is at the center of a dispute between the capital and Kurdistan.
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Kuwait Airways Corp. has decided to ground several ageing planes for repeated malfunctions, KAC chief Salem al-Othaina was quoted as saying in report on Sunday.
Othaina told Al-Rai newspaper that "initially three to five planes" would be grounded this week "in prelude to take new decisions to ground further aircraft."
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Donors at a major development conference for Afghanistan will pledge total aid of more than $16 billion for four years to 2015, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said Saturday.
Japan, which will co-chair the one-day conference on Sunday with Afghanistan, will provide up to $3 billion for the five years to 2016, in addition to $1 billion for the war-torn nation's neighboring states, he said.
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The International Monetary Fund again urged Ukraine Friday to raise gas prices for consumers, a sticking point in the resumption of an IMF bailout.
Ukraine's strong economic recovery in 2010-2011, following a global crisis, was slowing under pressure from lower demand for its exports and slow credit growth, the IMF said in an annual review of the economy.
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