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U.S. consumers are making fewer shopping trips across most retail outlets as they look for ways to combine errands and save money in an effort to battle rising gas prices and other economic pressures, according to The Nielsen Company.

European Commission decided to add the Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld standard (DVB-H) to the EU List of Standards, which serves as a basis for encouraging the harmonised provision of telecommunications across the EU.

No bloodbath but stockmarket trading was definitely edgy around the world. Asia and Europe fell, gold rallied, then eased, as did oil. The Dow ended higher after swinging through a 200 point range all day. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 fell, reflecting the overall tone while NASDAQ was also lower.

The domestic economy is weak, and the financial markets are nervous. The Federal Reserve will meet this week to decide how much lower interest rates should go. But they didn't wait before announcing to help troubled financial firms. The Federal Reserve announced a willingness to buy as much as $200 billion in very short-term obligations, with the ECB and other central banks also pledging some help.

A recent Harris Interactive survey has found that US consumers are already banking and making purchases using their mobile phones.

The European Commission today adopted proposals for the amendment of the VAT Directive and the VAT Administrative Cooperation Regulation to speed up the collection and exchange of information on intra-Community transactions from 2010 onwards. This will enable the Member States to detect carousel fraud very quickly. The proposals follow on from the Communication on the improvement of administrative cooperation between Member States to improve the fight against VAT fraud . They are part of a range of legislative and administrative measures which have been, or are about to be, agreed in order to combat VAT fraud more effectively.

Following its successful PISA programme for testing the educational attainments of 15-year old high-school students, OECD is launching a challenging new project to assess the knowledge and skills of adults.

While larger than its Baltic counterparts in terms of value, the Lithuanian pharmaceutical market remains one of the smallest in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, according to Research and Markets study.

The seasonally adjusted number of persons employed in the euro area(EA13) rose by 0.2% (270 000 persons) during the fourth quarter of 2007, according to provisional national accounts estimates published by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities.

Total hourly labour costs in the euro area (EA13) rose by 2.7% in nominal terms in the year up to the fourth quarter of 2007, compared with 2.5% for the previous quarter. In the EU27, the annual rise was 3.5% up to the fourth quarter of 2007, compared with 3.7% for the previous quarter.