French officials scrambled Wednesday to defend plans to save struggling Franco-Belgian bank Dexia, insisting it is an isolated event that poses no threat to France's own top credit rating.

Dexia, which specializes in lending to local authorities, found it could not access funding on the money markets where the Eurozone debt crisis has seen credit run dry.

The U.S. military faces serious budget cuts and will be unable to make up any shortfalls in the NATO alliance as European members slash defense spending, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta warned Wednesday.

Fiscal pressures are bearing down on both sides of the Atlantic and NATO allies will need to work closely together to pool funds, instead of counting on America's much larger defense spending to close the gap, Panetta said.

Fikra Group is organizing “Badi Ishteghil B Lebnen Job Fair” that will be held on Oct 27-29 at the Monroe Hotel Beirut, the group said in a press release.

The fair will be organized in collaboration with Koudourat Anti Unemployment Association, it said.

Egypt will substantially raise the price of its gas exports to Israel, which have stopped after militants blew up a Sinai desert pipeline, an Egyptian newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Oil minister Abdullah Ghurab said there would be "a large increase in the price" after the revision which would be announced soon, the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper reported.

India's rupee has slid nearly 10 percent in three months against the dollar, a consequence of global economic uncertainty that will stoke already high inflation in Asia's third-biggest economy.

The rupee's tumble makes import prices of everything from oil, fertilizers to food staples such as pulses, fuelling near-double-digit inflation and causing bigger hardship for India's poor millions.

Crude oil prices dropped below $100 a barrel in London and hit a one-year low in New York on Tuesday over heightened Eurozone crisis concerns that sent European stocks plunging.

Brent North Sea crude for delivery in November stood at $99.95 in late London deals, down $1.76 compared with Monday's close.

The flow of foreign direct investment into the Arab world is expected to slump by 17 percent in 2011, with countries that saw popular uprisings worst hit, a pan-Arab organization said on Tuesday.

FDI inflows into 21 Arab nations are forecast to fall to $55.1 billion this year compared to $66.2 billion in 2010, the Kuwait-based Arab Investment and Export Credit Guarantee Corp. said in a report.

China said Tuesday it "firmly opposed" a U.S. Senate bill aimed at punishing Beijing for its alleged currency manipulation, which is expected to make its final passage later this week.

The bill -- which comes 13 months ahead of U.S. elections in which high unemployment is likely to be an issue -- sets the stage for retaliatory duties on Chinese goods if Beijing is found to keep its currency artificially cheap.

The French government withdrew three permits Monday for shale gas exploration, dampening industry hopes that the controversial method for extracting natural gas would be approved in France.

"We have decided to abrogate the three research permits," Ecology Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told Agence France Presse.

An under-pressure Eurozone got back to work on Greece on Monday, trying to unblock hold-ups to promised bailout funds after international markets tumbled on the latest doubts.

Despite an announcement from Athens it would fail to meet this year's deficit targets, Greece's finance minister Evengelos Venizelos said his country would not be made a "scapegoat" for wider debt troubles as he went into talks with his 16 euro-area counterparts.