Indonesia is seeking European investors for US$9 billion worth of water, road, air and seaport projects in what will be a litmus test of Southeast Asian countries' ability to seize on ripe financial conditions to upgrade decrepit infrastructure.

The possibility that American Amanda Knox could be convicted of murder and extradited to Italy for punishment could force U.S. courts to enter legal territory that is largely uncharted, legal experts said.

Emerging from his bus, Venezuela's opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles is engulfed by frenzied female supporters who push past bodyguards to hug, kiss and photograph their idol.

Rusnee Maeloh slept through the 30-minute gunfight that killed her husband, but her neighbors in the notoriously violent Bacho district of southern Thailand heard distant explosions and feared the worst.

While politicians and public have fulminated against lottery-sized pay awards in Europe's boardrooms, fund firms, which wield the real power, are less concerned by such excesses and unlikely to use new powers to revolt on remuneration.

Lawyers have a saying that hard cases make bad law. Whatever happens this weekend on a bailout for Cyprus will set precedents for the eurozone's future banking union, investor confidence in the single currency area and political relations among European states.

The Federal Reserve's aggressive easing of monetary policy is proving surprisingly effective at blunting the blow to the U.S. economy from tighter fiscal policy, according to economists who have been scrambling to raise their growth forecasts.

In a U.S. Congress riven by partisan conflict on deficits and guns, a circle of eight senators from both parties meeting several times a week might be on the cusp of a major legislative breakthrough.

South Africa faces the risk of a huge exodus of foreign investors who are seeing the plunge in the rand's value rapidly erode their stock and bond returns.

China is poised to launch its most serious economic reform drive since the 1990s after a series of top appointments at the weekend put the architects of Zhu Rongji's clash with state owned enterprises in charge of key economic agencies.