Renewed questions about the economy's health and uncertainty surrounding the government's budget fight will likely lead the Federal Reserve on Wednesday to maintain the pace of the stimulus it's supplying to the economy.

That expectation marks a reversal from just six weeks ago, when almost everyone expected the Fed to start trimming its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases. The bond buying is intended to keep long-term interest rates low to help the economy rebound from the Great Recession.

Washington's intensifying hunt for tax evaders and their accomplices is creating a state of paranoia in the Swiss banking industry, with many bankers afraid to even leave the country, observers say.

"There are many hundreds, up to a thousand (Swiss bankers and others who have worked directly with U.S. clients) who are afraid of travelling to the United States or even to leave Switzerland," Martin Naville, the head of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, told Agence France Presse.

Lloyds Banking Group swung into profit during the first nine months of the year, the British state-rescued bank said on Tuesday as it looks to return to the private sector.

LBG reported net profit of £256 million ($412 million, 299 million euros) in the nine months to September 30 compared with a loss of £1.0 billion during the equivalent period in 2012.

Prime Minister David Cameron is launching a new Islamic Market Index on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday, part of a wider British effort to tap into the burgeoning market in Islamic finance.

According to prepared remarks released to journalists ahead of time, Cameron is expected to say that the British capital is "the biggest center for Islamic finance outside the Islamic world. And today our ambition is to go further still."

The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) on Tuesday announced a record annual net profit of Aus$6.3 billion (U.S.$6.0 billion) -- up 11 percent -- citing a successful Asia-focused growth strategy.

ANZ, one of Australia's four major banks, said an 18 percent reduction in bad debts and a 10 percent cut in costs had helped it to a consensus-beating result.

Oil-rich Kuwait said Monday that the generous cradle-to-grave welfare system provided to its 1.2 million citizens was "unsustainable" and it was time for change.

"The fact everyone must be aware of ... is that the existing welfare state system that Kuwaitis are used to is unsustainable," Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al-Sabah said, presenting his government's four-year program to parliament.

Emirates Airline is negotiating over a potentially "substantive" order for U.S. Boeing's B777 new-generation airliner, the airline's chief executive Tim Clark said on Monday.

Clark told the Financial Times newspaper: "We are in a relatively advanced stage of commercial negotiations... I think whatever happens there will be a substantive order for the new 777."

Mizuho Financial Group executives knew the firm was doing business with gangsters but failed to stop it, a panel said Monday, as Japan's finance minister slammed the banking giant over the affair.

Mizuho, one of Japan's biggest banks, has been under fire since it emerged last month that it processed hundreds of loans worth about $2 million for the country's notorious yakuza crime syndicates.

China should dismantle its widely loathed residency registration system, which restricts access to medical insurance and other benefits for hundreds of millions of migrants, a government-affiliated think tank said, according to reports Monday.

The Development Research Center (DRC) of the State Council, or cabinet, issued a list of far-reaching reform proposals ahead of a key meeting of the ruling Communist party due next month, when changes are expected to be approved.

Egypt's closure of tunnels used to smuggle goods into the Gaza strip has caused monthly losses of $230 million (170 million euros) to its economy, a Hamas official said Sunday.

The "closure of the tunnels caused heavy losses to the industry, commerce, agriculture, transport and construction sectors" of around $230 million monthly, said Hatem Oweida, deputy economy minister for the Islamist movement Hamas that governs the strip.