AP - The Obama administration launched a consolidated effort to spur new start-up businesses Monday, part of the White House's campaign to emphasize job creation while downplaying new economic spending initiatives that could face congressional opposition.

AP - Business is brisk for Steve Crosby, who is helping switch the lights back on in this ruined city by selling portable generators from a van parked in roadside rubble. But thousands of other businesses remain closed — perhaps indefinitely — by an earthquake that has become New Zealand's most expensive natural disaster.

AFP - The Federal Reserve lent a Libyan state-backed bank billions of dollars during the financial crisis, documents made public on Thursday have revealed.

AP - Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann on Saturday described the loss of 'economic liberty' that young Americans face today as a 'flash point of history' in which the younger generation will ask what their elders did to stop it.

AFP - Lawmakers voted against raising the US borrowing cap without making cuts in spending, in a Republican ploy Democrats branded a 'charade' unworthy of a vital economic issue.

AP - Business confidence at major Japanese manufacturers tumbled to its lowest level in more than a year as the impact of the earthquake and tsunami became clearer, the central bank said Friday, but it expects improvement later this year.

Reuters - Japan's finance minister kept up verbal intervention against a rising yen even as a weak dollar won a slight reprieve on Monday due to growing signs that U.S. lawmakers can reach an agreement to avoid a sovereign default.

AP - The dollar is slipping after a handful of better-than-expected economic reports from Europe and China.

Reuters - A departing Federal Reserve official lit into the U.S. central bank's ultra-easy policies on Wednesday, saying they may be doing more harm than good and could harm economic growth over the long term.

Reuters - China's factory activity picked up in September for a second month in a row and export orders strengthened, offering some reassurance that the world's second-largest economy can weather the global economic turmoil.

Reuters - President Barack Obama will meet top Democrats from the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday to plot strategy on how to advance his jobs proposals that are stalled in Congress amid Republican resistance.

AP - Chinese leaders are scrambling to shore up flagging economic growth as exports weaken, abruptly reversing course after they spent two years struggling to cool an overheated expansion and surging inflation.

Reuters - Iran is feeling the bite from economic sanctions imposed over its nuclear program, which is capable of producing a weapon although Iranian leaders have not yet decided to do so, top intelligence chiefs told Congress on Tuesday.

Reuters - U.S. prosecutors expanded a criminal case over the alleged theft of industrial secrets from chemical giant DuPont , securing an indictment against a Chinese company on economic espionage-related charges.