The International Monetary Fund called on Wednesday for Lebanon to adopt a cautious budget for next year as the country faces challenges from unrest in neighboring Syria.

"High downside risks call for a prudent 2012 budget," the IMF said in a statement following a Fund mission in Beirut.

Finnish-German telecom equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) on Wednesday announced a restructuring plan entailing 17,000 job cuts by the end of 2013.

NSN, which on November 1 counted 74,000 employees, "plans to reduce its global workforce by approximately 17,000 by the end of 2013," it said in a statement, adding that its restructuring plan was aimed at cutting annual costs by one billion euros ($1.3 billion) compared to 2011 outlays.

Fitch ratings agency said Wednesday that it was cutting the outlook on Turkey from 'positive' to 'stable' given a recent increase in risks and affirmed the country's rating at BB+.

"The revision of the Outlook to Stable reflects an increase in near-term risks to macroeconomic stability," said Ed Parker, managing director in the EMEA Sovereign group at Fitch.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Wednesday held a workshop under the Lebanon Business Linkages Initiative (LBLI) with the Syndicate of Lebanese Food Industries (SLFI) to increase knowledge about accessing international food markets.

Farmers, food industrialists, governmental officials, and academics attended this workshop. The project supports SLFI in developing a strategy to access the U.S. specialty food market.

A Eurozone bailout deal set up last month to slash Greece's huge debt by nearly a third is probably the last chance to reconstruct the country's economy, the Greek central bank warned on Wednesday.

"The new opportunity provided to Greece under the agreement of 26 October may well be the last such opportunity," the Bank of Greece said according to an official translation of a Greek statement released first.

Syria, isolated over its deadly protest crackdown, hopes to cash in on support from neighbors Iraq and Lebanon to counter Arab sanctions that threaten to choke its economy.

"We know how to manage when the going gets rough, because we have been facing sanctions for years," a Syrian official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Oil prices rose on Tuesday after the West slapped economic sanctions on major crude exporter Iran, helping to offset weak demand worries caused by the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, analysts said.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in January, climbed $1.43 to $98.35 a barrel.

Greece's largest trade union called Tuesday for a 24-hour strike next week to protest austerity measures, which would be the first major walkout since the appointment of an interim coalition government earlier this month.

The GSEE union, which represents mainly private sector workers, said it was aiming for a general strike on Dec. 1, but was waiting for a decision later Tuesday by the country's civil servants' union as to whether they would join. Greece's last general strike, held in October, saw services across the country shut down for two days.

The Indian rupee plunged to an all time low against the dollar Tuesday as global demand for the U.S. currency and India's darkening economic picture swamped out central bank efforts to staunch the decline.

The rupee hit 52.73 to the dollar, breaching its March 3, 2009 low, analysts said.

The collapse of talks aimed at reducing the staggering U.S. budget deficit weighed on world markets Tuesday but failed to stifle a rebound in Europe.

Stocks took a pummeling on Monday after a so-called supercommittee in Congress failed to reach a deal to cut the U.S. federal budget deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years. While not entirely unexpected, the failure heightened worries that political bickering — in the U.S. and Europe — will hurt efforts to cut debt during a period of declining economic growth.