Athens / AFP Public transport ground to a halt in Greece as trade unions launched a 48-hour general strike against government plans to overhaul pensions and increase taxes, as demanded by international creditors. No trains were running across the country, and boats linking the Greek mainland to the islands were anchored at ports. In the capital Athens, the metro, ...

  Bloomberg Pound bears who have made the British currency the worst performer among developed nations in 2016, will have a raft of economic data and a Bank of England policy statement next week to help them assess whether gloom is still justified. Bulls retreated, as sterling snapped a three-week gain versus the dollar that was driven by easing concern ...

  Bloomberg Government bonds from the euro region’s so-called peripheral nations may further underperform German securities with a banking crisis in Italy and political gridlock in Spain far from being resolved. While euro-area sovereign bonds are supported by the European Central Bank’s €80 billion ($91 billion) a month asset-purchase program, domestic solvency worries are back in focus. Even as Italian ...

Paris / AFP Standard and Poor’s upgraded its outlook for Turkey’s credit rating, judging the prospects for the nation’s economy to be stable despite political instability that may dampen growth and reform plans. The end to the negative outlook on the BB+ foreign currency rating, one rung below an investment grade, came a day after President RecepTayyipErdogan’s plans to consolidate ...

  Berlin / AFP The EU won’t sacrifice its high food safety standards for better US auto market access in a transatlantic trade deal being negotiated, a German minister said. The comments by Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt were the latest criticism of the thorny negotiations toward sealing a wide-ranging pact that would create a free-trade zone covering 850 million people. ...

  Washington / AFP   US employers cut back hiring in April in the wake of the economy’s sharp downturn, raising worries of a protracted slowdown in the world’s largest economy. Net new jobs fell unexpectedly to the lowest level in seven months, with just 160,000 additional jobs generated, over 40,000 less than economists predicted, the Labour Department reported. That was ...

  Bloomberg The dollar’s biggest gain in six months may run out out fuel as reports from sectors of the U.S. economy keep pointing to sluggish growth. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index that tracks the currency versus 10 peers rallied this week from a one-year low, shrugging off a patchy jobs report. The employment data prompted Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ...

  Bloomberg Argentina’s credit rating was raised to B- from selective default by S&P Global Ratings, which cited the country’s payment on Thursday of $2.7 billion of past-due interest on bonds in default since July 2014. The outlook on the South American country’s rating is stable, S&PGR said in a statement. The ranking is five levels below investment grade and ...

  Bloomberg Monsanto Co. may have to wait months to gain approval in Argentina for a patent on its latest genetically modified soybean technology, another setback for the world’s largest seed company in its years-long quest to collect royalty payments from the country’s farmers. Monsanto’s Intacta soybean seed still lacks full patent approval from the Argentine regulator, Argentina’s Science and ...

  Bloomberg President Barack Obama touted a new rule from his administration that’s aimed at making it harder for people to hide money in the U.S. — but it came under quick criticism from a group of organizations pushing for greater financial transparency. Parts of the rule, which will require financial institutions to identify account holders hidden behind shell companies, ...