MILAN, Italy - Sseptember 21, 2011 - Standard & Poor’s cut the credit ratings of leading Italian banks Mediobanca and Intesa Sanpaolo to A/A-1 from A+/A-1 on Wednesday, following the agency’s one-notch downgrade of Italy’s sovereign debt.

NEW YORK - September 21, 2011 - Moody’s Corp cut the debt ratings of Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., and Citigroup, Inc. on Wednesday, saying the U.S. government is getting less comfortable with bailing out large troubled lenders.

The government is “more likely now than during the financial crisis to allow a large bank to fail should it become financially troubled,” the ratings agency said.

LONDON, England - September 20, 2011 - Global financial markets are bracing themselves for another day of turmoil on Tuesday after credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Italy late Monday night.

The news came after panic gripped global markets as a fresh showdown over Greece renewed fears that the eurozone will be plunged into crisis.

LONDON, England - September 18, 2011 - British Airways faces a bill of nearly 50 million euros, the highest of any airline, when carriers around the world are brought into the European Union’s carbon emissions trading scheme next year, a new study estimates.

WROCLAW, Poland (PNN) - September 17, 2011 - The European Central Bank defended the eurozone's handling of its public finances Saturday, saying the bloc was better off than its global rivals, a day after the United States lectured Europe on its debt record.

"Taken as a whole, it is probably better than other major advanced economies," ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet said at the close of talks in Poland among European Union finance ministers, marred on Friday by a spat with guest U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

WROCLAW, Poland - September 17, 2011 - Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner delivered an unusually direct plea for action to his counterparts in Europe on Friday, urging leaders to move with more unity to head off a potential new wave of financial crisis on the continent.

LOS ANGELES, Kalifornia - September 16, 2011 - Kalifornia's unemployment rate ticked up a notch in August, to 12.1% from 12% the month before, according to new data from the  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employers shed 8,400 jobs from payrolls.

The numbers were little surprise to economists, who had anticipated no growth after national data showed that employers added no jobs nationally in August, when the U.S. unemployment rate stayed steady at 9.1%.