U.S. auto giant General Motors will invest $1 billion (778 million euros) in Russia over five years to more than double production by 2015, the managing director of its Russian operations said.

"The reason we are there is we see opportunity," James Bovenzi said late Thursday at a dinner event organized by the U.S.-Russia Business Council on the sidelines of the Detroit auto show.

Japanese energy firm Inpex and French giant Total on Friday announced a huge $34 billion gas project in Australia, as Tokyo looks for alternatives to nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

Japan has virtually no hydrocarbon resources of its own and is the world's biggest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to drive its energy-hungry economy, the third largest on the planet.

Air France-KLM said Thursday it would implement a three-year cost-cutting plan, including wage freezes and investment reductions, aimed at saving at least one billion euros ($1.3 billion) and reducing its debt.

The company said in a statement that its board of directors had approved "an ambitious three-year plan to restore profitability".

Oil prices rose above $101 a barrel in Asia on Thursday as concerns loomed that a strike in Nigeria and heightened tension in Iran would threaten global oil supplies.

Benchmark crude for February delivery rose 61 cents to $101.48 a barrel in late Kuala Lumpur time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell by $1.37 to settle at $100.87 in New York on Wednesday.

The European Central Bank, which has cut interest rates the past two months, looks set to hold its fire until it can better assess how effective its previous actions have been.

Last month -- on the same day that EU leaders met in Brussels in what was seen as a make-or-break crisis summit -- the ECB brought Eurozone borrowing costs back down to their previous historical low of 1.0 percent, effectively reversing this year's two earlier rate hikes.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday assured Italy its tough austerity measures would be "rewarded", amid signs her own economy was grinding to a halt as tensions in Eurozone markets simmered.

Capping a flurry of diplomatic activity as leaders strive to stem the crisis that threatens to tip the 17-member Eurozone into recession, Merkel expressed "great respect" for Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti's reform efforts.

Japan gave a boost Thursday to the U.S. campaign to sanction Iran over its nuclear program, pledging to buy less Iranian oil, a day after China reacted coolly to the U.S. effort.

Iran's "nuclear development problem can't be ignored by the world, so from that perspective we understand the U.S. actions," Finance Minister Jun Azumi told reporters after meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was visiting Tokyo after two days in Beijing.

Germany's economy is expected to have slipped into reverse in the last quarter of 2011 in spite of showing an overall growth for the year of 3 percent, the country's Federal Statistics Office revealed Wednesday.

The country's annual growth rate was achieved in spite of the financial crisis in Europe which has other economies such as Greece, Spain and Italy struggling with huge debts.

Debt-crippled Greece's budget deficit is expected to hit 9.6 percent of economic output in 2011, about half a percentage point above target, the development minister acknowledged Wednesday.

Michalis Chryssochoidis said that an increase in the use of European Union structural development funds had contributed to lowering government overspending from 10.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2010.

The gulf between rich and poor and a simultaneous surge in the youth population and that of retirees are among the factors threatening to sew the "seeds of dystopia", a new report warned Wednesday.

The World Economic Forum warned in its Global Risks 2012 report that social upheaval and vulnerability to further economic shocks and risk were undermining the progress of globalization.