There are now 30 million more people without jobs around the world than before the global financial crisis began, the head of the International Labor Organization said in remarks published Friday.

The figures come amid a growing debate over the merits of austerity, especially in Europe, where painful budget-cutting has pushed jobless levels as high as 25 percent in some countries, including debt-hit Greece and Spain.

Public debt in developed countries standing at "wartime levels" is the biggest threat to the global economy, IMF chief Christine Lagarde warned in Tokyo on Friday.

The International Monetary Fund's managing director said the creaking debt loads were leaving governments at the mercy of the markets and needed to be reduced.

Beverage tycoon Zong Qinghou regained his position as China's richest man this year, Forbes magazine said Friday, but the global economic slump took its toll on other billionaires.

Zong, who heads soft-drink producer Wahaha, has a fortune of $10 billion, according to the magazine's influential annual ranking of China's 400 richest people, helping him win back the position he lost last year.

U.S. stocks headed higher early Thursday buoyed by a sharp fall in weekly claims for unemployment, which hit their lowest level in four and a half years.

Opening action focused on Sprint Nextel, whose shares immediately soared 17 percent on a report that Japan's Softbank was planning a bid for the number three U.S. wireless carrier.

Japanese telecom firm Softbank is mulling a monster deal that would see it buy a majority stake in U.S.-based Sprint Nextel for as much as $23 billion, reports said Thursday.

Japan's leading Nikkei business daily said Softbank, the country's third-biggest mobile carrier, could launch a bid worth over 1.8 trillion yen ($23 billion), without citing sources.

In yet another landmark achievement, Bank Audi has announced the launch of the Bank Audi ABC MasterCard Credit Card, Lebanon’s first co-branded card offered by a bank in collaboration with a prominent shopping mall, a press release said Wednesday.

The new card was unveiled during an event held at Les Jardins de la Villa Audi at Sofil on Thursday, September 27, in the presence of key executives from the three institutions, including Samir Hanna, Group CEO of Bank Audi sal - Audi Saradar Group, Robert Fadel, Chairman & CEO of ABC malls and Michael Miebach, President, Middle East and Africa, MasterCard Worldwide.

The International Monetary Fund is happy for debt-battered Greece to have an extra two years to bring its runaway deficit in line with the demands of global creditors, its chief said Thursday.

Christine Lagarde told a news conference in Tokyo it would take time before Athens is able to tame its budget overrun to agreed levels, in comments that add weight to the move to push back a deadline to 2016.

China will "lose out" by not sending its top two finance officials to global economic talks in Japan this week, the IMF's chief said Thursday, weighing into a bitter dispute between the Asian giants.

Christine Lagarde called on Beijing and Tokyo -- embroiled in a spat over a chain of islands in the East China Sea -- to settle their row quickly, adding that "countries in this region are very important for the global economy".

The euro weakened in Asia on Wednesday as traders sold the unit over fears about the eurozone's fiscal woes and a gloomy world economic outlook from the International Monetary Fund.

The European common currency was changing hands at $1.2859 in Tokyo afternoon trade against $1.2881 in New York late Tuesday, while it edged down to 100.58 yen from 100.77 yen.

Anti-poverty activists posing as digger-driving investors staged a symbolic land grab in Tokyo on Wednesday as they called on world finance chiefs to help keep food prices under control.

Seven young men and women, dressed in dark suits and flashing thousand-yen bills, rode toy diggers and excavators over a map of Africa, picking up paper fruit and vegetables.