The President of the Banque centrale du Luxembourg (BCL), Yves Mersch has said that the rise in unemployment is mainly due to labor costs being too high.

Japan's economy is recovering more slowly than previously thought from its worst recession on record, hobbled by stubborn deflation and weak domestic demand, government data showed Thursday.

Pedestrians pass through a shopping district in Seoul. South Korea's central bank has frozen the key interest rate at a record low 2 percent for a 13th month.

Auckland's Sky Tower seen in the centre of the New Zealand city. The country's central bank said Thursday it would hold the official interest rate at a record low 2.5 percent and signalled the first rise was likely around the middle of the year.

A homeless man sleeps on a doorstep in central Sydney. Australia's unemployment rate rose slightly to 5.3 percent in February from January's revised 5.2 percent, with just 400 new jobs created, official data has shown.

A Northern Rock bank branch in London. State-owned bank Northern Rock, which came close to collapse three years ago, has said that losses narrowed to 257.5 million pounds last year.

GM vehicles are lined up ready for export at Incheon port in South Korea. GM Daewoo, the South Korean unit of struggling US auto giant General Motors, has said it intends to return to profit this year and currently needs no further financial support from creditors.

Bundles of one dollar bills at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, DC. The number of millionaires in the United States jumped by 16 percent last year after slumping by 27 percent in 2008, a report released Tuesday shows.

New Zealand Finance Minister Bill English talks to journalists in 2009. New Zealand will next month close a wholesale funding guarantee introduced at the height of the global financial crisis, Finance Minister Bill English said Wednesday.

A US Air Force Stratotanker lowers its refueling boom to a bomber for mid-air refuelling. American giant Boeing is poised to win the 35-billion-dollar (26-billion-euro) deal to supply US air force refuelling tanker jets, after rival partners Northrop Grumman and EADS dropped out of the race Tuesday.