Evidence is piling up that the U.S. economy is rebounding from the past few months' stall, with consumers spending more, a rebound in job creation, and wages beginning to rise.

But analysts believe the Federal Reserve will want to see more when it meets in the coming week to again weigh hiking interest rates.

Slovakia has been a star performer in Central Europe with a boom in car manufacturing driving brisk economic growth, but ghost villages haunt the countryside as people leave in search of jobs.

A white church has watched over Harakovce since villagers erected it in the century after the Black Death swept across Europe.

Iraq's oil revenues are even lower than projected in the country's already austere 2015 budget, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Saturday, spelling more financial trouble for cash-strapped Baghdad.

"So far, our oil revenues are below what was passed in the budget," Abadi said in televised remarks, without providing exact figures on the shortfall.

Greek premier Alexis Tsipras warned that Greece must be ready for a "difficult compromise" in its talks with creditors as his closest advisers arrived in Brussels on Saturday to thrash out a last-minute deal.

Cash-starved Greece is under huge pressure to strike an agreement to unlock vital bailout funds in the coming days, if not hours, after top eurozone officials turned the screws Friday and said they were preparing the ground for an Athens default.

Egypt will inaugurate on August 6 a "new Suez canal" shipping route aimed at speeding up traffic along the existing waterway, officials said on Saturday.

Dubbed the Suez Canal Axis, the new 72-kilometer (45 miles) flagship project would run part of the way alongside the existing canal that connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.

U.S. lawmakers dealt a stinging blow Friday to President Barack Obama and his ambitious trade agenda, stalling a measure that would have given him fast-track authority to conclude a trans-Pacific trade accord.

The vote, in which two-thirds of the House of Representatives opposed a workers aid program in the trade package, marked a defeat for the president, who had personally come to Capitol Hill earlier in the day in a failed bid to persuade fellow Democrats to back him.

Taxi hailing app Uber plans to invest seven billion yuan ($1.1 billion) in China, the Financial Times reported on its website, citing a company email.

The paper said it obtained the message sent to Uber investors this week by its CEO Travis Kalanick.

European plane maker Airbus believes the United States will be the biggest customer for its A400M military transport jet, despite a fatal crash involving one of them during a test flight last month.

"By the next decade at the latest, the U.S. armed forces will be the biggest customer for the aircraft," Airbus chief executive Tom Enders told the weekly magazine WirtschaftsWoche in an interview.

Jose's scars are a constant reminder of the day gang members set him on fire for failing to pay their "war tax" -- a daily nightmare for bus drivers in Honduras.

Jose says he was never warned he had to pay the "tax," imposed on bus and taxi drivers, small-business owners and ordinary residents by the gangs that have carved up much of Central America and made it one of the most violent regions in the world.

Greece on Friday said it needed to clinch a deal with its EU-IMF creditors by June 18 to avert a default on its debt, as pressure mounts on Athens to give in to tough reform demands.

One of Greece's key creditors, the IMF, pulled its team out of negotiations on Thursday because of major differences, dampening earlier optimism from the Europeans that an agreement could be close.