ECONOMY

Consumption of the precious safe haven yellow metal gold in the world's second-largest economy has been forecast to hit above 1,000 tonnes in 2013. However, the same could not be said for the year 2014.

Despite a sharp rise in food inflation, U.K. families are spending 8.5 percent less on food today than what they did before the financial crisis; but the savings had been mostly due to a switch in consumption to cheaper, less healthy choices, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) on Monday.

Swiss banks could be forced to raise their minimum leverage ratios to as much as 10 percent, reported the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, in a move aimed at improving industry stability - yet could see banks have to cut down on their service offerings.

With some of the most useful rare earths feared to be depleted within the next 50 years, scientists are racing against time to develop technologies to maximise their full potential as well as what could remain of them. Scientists are now specifically trying to establish a method to recycle rare earths from wastewater.

Japan's financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), is set to investigate the nation's three largest banks for transactions with the Yakuza, according to Reuters on Tuesday.

Germany's persistently high trade surplus and export-led growth model is preventing the eurozone from recovering quickly, harming the wider global economy in the process, said a U.S. Treasury report on Wednesday.

Nearly 40,000 Chinese couples living in Bejing have filed for during the first nine months of this year, according to the China Daily on Tuesday, a year-on-year increase of close to 41 percent - with experts speculating that couples had been deliberately avoiding a property tax imposed earlier this year.

The U.S. government saw a budget deficit of $680.3 billion for fiscal year 2013, showed Treasury Department data on Wednesday, a 37 percent drop from the fiscal 2012 deficit and marking the first time in five years that the figure has been below $1 trillion.

The fifty million dollar jackpot was won by a couple of players from Western Canada in the massive draw on Friday, according to Loto-Quebec.

Citi analysts are optimistic of better times ahead for Australia and forecast the country would begin to register economic expansion by the middle of 2014.

Qantas Airlines of Australia and Japan Airlines on Thursday announced they will be increasing their stake ownership in low-cost subsidiary, Jetstar Japan.

Is Apple's (AAPL) iPhone finally penetrating through in China in November 2013? Speculators are getting anxious over the idea based from the latest advert that China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier, placed on its Web site.

New Zealand ranks fifth in world’s most prosperous nation to live in, based on the 2013 Legatum Prosperity Index. The international report contains the rankings of 142 nations in terms of wealth and well-being.

Frequent fliers of China Southern Airlines to Sydney now has another reason to commute via the Chinese airliner with the launch of its Airbus A380.

Northeast Syria is now under threat of a polio outbreak. The UN's health agency World Health Organisation on Tuesday said there are now at least 10 confirmed cases in the country, which has a very big potential to spread and encapsulate the entire Middle East region.

The gods are angry. In this case, it is the Filipino conservationists versus professional wakeskater Brian Grubb who claimed he was able to conquer the Banaue Rice Terraces because he had been given permission no less than by the tribal leaders guarding it.

At least 139 of the artworks seen in various Dutch museums were determined to have been stolen from the Jews during the 1933 to 1945 World War II invasion by the Nazis.

Despite a dearth of educational institutions, the government of Bohol, stricken by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake on Oct 15, has announced it will resume classes on Nov 5.

The energy demand of the world's second-largest economy has been forecast to slow down by 1.8 per cent as China strives to tackle the cleaner, greener road.

Pope Francis' fan base on online social networking and microblogging service Twitter has reached 10 million.

"We now need the US and EU to quickly implement their own extractive industries transparency laws, and for Canada to get its law in place," said Oxfam Chief Executive Mark Goldring. "Mining giants Australia and South Africa have an important opportunity to lead G20 nations by example on this issue too."

A three-year-old toddler who contracted the deadly HIV virus while still inside her mother's womb continue to remain health and scot free of the infection even if it has been 18 months since she last received her treatment. Doctors hope the AIDS virus will go into permanent remission so the child can really live normally.

According to a study published in medical journal, The Lancet, there has been an increase of 25 percent in the last 20 years in the 20- to 64-year-old age bracket either affected or dying due to stroke.

Saudi Arabia has signified it will slap appropriate sanctions to protesters once they push through their planned Oct 26 mass action objecting to the ban against women drivers in the oil-rich kingdom.

In today's Daily Reckoning we're going to discuss the possible impact on Australia of a changing global monetary system. We say possible because no one really knows where this rabbit hole we're heading down leads, so it's all guesswork.

Money Printing: Everything Old is New Again

The Spanish economy grew by 0.1 percent between July and September this year on the back of stronger exports, according to estimates from Spain's central bank on Wednesday, though unemployment remains stubbornly high at around the 26 percent mark.

Businesses in earthquake-damaged Bohol in the Philippines have resumed tour operations Thursday as survivors reclaimed lives amid the rising death toll that has reached 195. Cost of damages caused by 7.2 magnitude temblor had hit Php 1 billion (AU$24 million).

Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan of Brunei Darussalam, has sought to toughen the existing Sharia law penal code in the country. Effective April 2014, offenders of the revised law, such as adulterers face death by stoning, amputation of limbs for theft, as well as flogging for alcohol consumption and abortion, among other types of punishments.