This year's Nobel prize for medicine has gone to one British and two American scientists, for discovering how to produce embryonic stem cells in mice and then using the technique to inactivate individual genes in the animals

  Kazakhstan's president took pressure off an Eni-led consortium when he told Italy's visiting prime minister, Romano Prodi, there were no plans to revise the contract to develop the vast Kashagan oil field

  Eurozone politicians may fret about the euro rising to record levels but businesses in the 13-country region, while concerned, are not panicking – and can even see positive benefits

  The credit squeeze will force governments worldwide to make substantial changes to their budget plans, Rodrigo Rato, outgoing managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has warned

  Montenegro's use of the euro as its national currency is incompatible with European Union law, the bloc's finance ministers are set to warn

  Managing directors of the International Monetary Fund are traditionally circumspect when talking about currency values. But with only a few weeks left in the job, Rodrigo Rato is unusually forthright

  The US intends to supply Mexico with a $1bn aid package to help combat an increasingly costly and violent war against drugs, according to a top Mexican diplomat

  Observers will be scrutinising London's contemporary art scene closely next week, to determine whether one of the fastest growing markets in the world is about to flounder

  The French government has unveiled its plans to boost Paris as a financial centre, proposing a more lightly regulated market for companies and funds on the Euronext exchange

  The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cautioned against ignoring the inflation represented by rising food and energy prices

  Robert Zoellick revamped the top management structure of the World Bank, bringing in Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian finance and foreign minister, as one of his top deputies

  Europe's largest energy group says its will go to Germany's constitutional court if member states approved EC proposals to split power generation from distribution

  The UN agency that manages international treaties on patents, copyrights and trademarks was in turmoil after industrialised countries blocked approval ot its budget

  The credit turbulence that began in the US mortgage market put European policymakers on the spot as the European Central Bank all but dropped plans for an interest rate rise