Financial Freedom. Best business news.

He may have 900 million users and billions of dollars, but that doesn

Instant online cash advance with next-day cash direct deposit.

Europe

Builders broke ground on more homes than forecast in January, helped by warmer weather and adding to signs the U.S. residential real estate market is stabilizing.

Starts rose 1.5 percent to a 699,000 annual rate from December

Five staff at Britain’s largest selling tabloid The Sun were arrested Saturday along with three other people over alleged bribes paid to police and defense officials, detectives and the newspaper’s parent company said.

News. Corp said in a statement that police had searched the homes and offices of the five members of staff at the tabloid, long regarded regarded as the jewel in the crown of Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire.

A serving police officer, a female employee at the Ministry of Defense and a 36-year-old member of the armed forces were also arrested in an early morning swoop.

London’s Metropolitan Police said all eight people are being questioned, and confirmed they were detained following information provided to detectives by the management standards committee of News Corp.

The committee “will continue to ensure that all appropriate steps are taken to protect legitimate journalistic privilege and sources, private or personal information and legal privilege,” News Corp. said in a statement.

Police said their investigation relates to alleged corrupt payments made to police officers and other officials by journalists. It is part of a series of police investigations sparked by Britain’s tabloid phone hacking scandal.

Source

German exports fell four times more than economists forecast in December as the sovereign debt crisis damped economic growth across the euro region.

Exports, adjusted for work days and seasonal changes, slumped 4.3 percent from November, when they rose 2.6 percent, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. Economists forecast a decline of 1 percent, according to the median of 17 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Imports dropped 3.9 percent.

While the German economy probably shrank 0.25 percent in the final three months of last year, data this year suggest it may avoid recession, which is commonly defined as two consecutive quarterly contractions. Business sentiment jumped to a five-month high in January and factory orders gained 1.7 percent in December, driven by demand from outside the 17-nation euro area.

Optimism over upcoming U.S. jobs figures helped stocks and the euro to rally on Friday despite further evidence that the 17-nation eurozone is heading for recession.

Following a run of fairly strong U.S. economic data, investors are increasingly confident that the world’s largest economy is over a soft patch from last summer, helping to offset the global economic impact wrought by Europe’s ongoing debt crisis.

Figures released Friday provided further evidence that the eurozone is heading for a recession. Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, said retail sales dropped 0.4 percent during the month, in contrast to expectations for an increase of the same amount.

The December data reinforced expectations that the eurozone contracted during the fourth quarter of the year. Eurostat is due to publish its first estimate for the quarter on Feb. 15.

The highlight of the day in the markets will be the monthly U.S. nonfarm payrolls data. Expectations are that the U.S. economy generated around 150,000 jobs during January. Though that is unspectacular for an economy recovering from its worst recession since World War II, the amount of jobs being created is up from levels seen just a few months ago.

“Volatility is likely to remain low until these figures are out, with traders opting to sit and await news rather than heavily commit themselves,” said David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Index.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 0.5 percent at 5,823 while Germany’s DAX rose 0.4 percent to 6,682. The CAC-40 in France was 0.5 percent higher at 3,394.

Wall Street was also poised for a solid opening, though how it actually performs will hinge on the payrolls data, which are released an hour before the bell free credit score. Dow futures and the S&P 500 futures were both up 0.2 percent.

The euro was also garnering support alongside stocks _ when appetite for risk is elevated, the euro often finds favour. It was trading 0.3 percent higher at $1.3177 despite the retail sales disappointment.

The focus on the U.S. has proved a welcome diversion for some traders from monitoring the daily grind of Europe’s debt crisis, where much hinges on whether Greece can secure a deal with its private creditors, as is anticipated. A deal is expected soon, though that has been the official line for a few weeks.

Earlier in Asia, the picture was mixed.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.5 percent to close at 8,831.93 but Hong Kong’s Hang Seng ended marginally higher at 20,756.98.

Mainland Chinese shares extended gains fueled by news of fresh support for the farming and small-business sectors, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rising 0.8 percent to 2,330.41 while the Shenzhen Composite Index added 1.5 percent to 878.29.

Oil markets were also relatively subdued. Benchmark oil for March delivery was up 40 cents to $96.76 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

____

Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Source

Regions Financial is days away from announcing a sale of its Morgan Keegan unit, according to a Wall Street Journal report. And it seems St. Louis-based Stifel Financial may not be out of the bidding.

The news follows a more than six-month-long effort by Birmingham-based Regions to sell Morgan Keegan, a Memphis based brokerage with 1,200 financial advisers nationwide.

Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg News said last week that Regions had ended the talks with Stifel.

However, the Wall Street Journal also is reporting online today that Stifel remains in the hunt to buy Morgan Keegan and is bidding against Raymond James, a St. Petersburg-based brokerage with 5,400 financial advisers. Stifel has about 2,000 financial advisers.

The Wall Street Journal’s report says the sale price for Morgan Keegan will range between $900 million and $1 billion, which is less than what Regions sought for the unit when it placed it up for sale last June Payday advance. Regions bought Morgan Keegan in 2001 for $789 million.

Regions owes the U.S. Treasury $3.5 billion from participating in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, in 2008, and is seeking to use the proceeds from the Morgan Keegan sale to pay a portion of the TARP money it owes.

A Regions spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the status of the Morgan Keegan sale.

Source

A U.S. trade envoy has accused China’s government of increasing its role in the economy in violation of its free-trade pledges and he appealed to Beijing to reconsider its embrace of “state capitalism.”

The comments reflect a harder U.S. tone toward Beijing amid disputes over market access for banking and other services and complaints China is supporting its producers of solar power and other technology despite promising to allow free competition.

In a speech this week, the U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization cited a “troubling trend” of increased Chinese government intervention in the economy over the past five years despite its WTO commitments to open its markets.

The ambassador, Michael Punke, made the comments Wednesday in Geneva, according to a transcript on the website of the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. He was speaking at a WTO meeting for the tenth and final annual review of China’s compliance with its WTO obligations since it joined the body in 2001.

“China seems to be embracing state capitalism more strongly each year, rather than continuing to move toward the economic reform goals that originally drove its pursuit of WTO membership,” he said. “This is a troubling development, and the United States urges the Chinese government to reconsider the path it is on.”

During a trip through Asia last month, President Barack Obama called on Beijing to show more maturity in its economic relations with other nations.

“Increasingly, trade frictions with China can be traced to China’s pursuit of industrial policies that rely on trade-distorting government actions to promote or protect China’s state-owned enterprises and domestic industries,” Punke said.

China’s trade and economy have grown rapidly since 2001, propelling it past Japan as the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States and financing a military buildup that has alarmed its neighbors.

On Wednesday, China’s Defense Ministry criticized Washington’s strengthened military pact with Australia as a throwback to “Cold War thinking.”

Beijing has alarmed foreign companies by unveiling initiatives to build up state-owned corporate champions in an array of fields from telecommunications to wind energy.

Business groups complain Beijing appears to be trying to squeeze foreign companies out of its clean energy and other promising industries. They have questioned whether the communist government wants to live up to pledges to allow foreign companies to compete on an equal footing with Chinese rivals.

Punke said that in its first five years of WTO membership, Beijing took “impressive steps” to reduce tariffs, eliminate trade barriers and improve protection for intellectual property rights.

But he noted complaints that Beijing tries to intimidate foreign companies, threatening to retaliate if they speak up about problematic policies or cooperate with their governments in challenging them.

Punke complained that Beijing appears to resort to trade actions in response to legitimate steps by the United States and other trading partners under their trade laws.

Last month, China launched a probe of U.S. government support for its solar, wind and other renewable energy industries after American authorities agreed to investigate a complaint by a group of companies that Beijing improperly subsidizes exports of solar panels and hurts foreign competitors.

“This type of conduct is at odds with fundamental principles of the WTO’s rules-based system,” Punke said.

Source

Pope Benedict XVI has had his first meeting with Italy’s new leader on the tarmac of Rome’s airport just before taking off for a trip to Africa.

Premier Mario Monti greeted the pope Friday morning as Benedict descended from the helicopter that brought him from the Vatican to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport. They chatted as they walked slowly across the tarmac to the pope’s waiting plane.

Monti later Friday faces the second of two confidence votes for his government in parliament cash advance flexible payments. The Senate on Thursday easily approved his government, formed of bankers, professors and CEOS aimed at saving Italy from its debt crisis.

Benedict then took off for the west African nation of Benin for a three-day visit where he will speak of the role of the church in Africa.

Source

Thailand’s prime minister says the country’s catastrophic floods may take up to six weeks to recede.

Yingluck Shinawatra also said in a weekly address to the nation Saturday that the crisis had displaced more than 110,000 people from their homes.

The government said the death toll had risen to 356.

Excessive monsoon rains have drowned a third of the Southeast Asian nation since late July, and over the last two weeks the government has struggled to prevent the inundation from pouring through Bangkok.

Districts just outside the capital’s northern boundaries have been submerged for days. Since Friday, rising waters have caused minor flooding in Bangkok’s outskirts.

Source