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The number of new houses being built in the US edged up in September, but by less than expected, raising concerns about the strength of the US recovery.

Housing starts rose by 0.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590,000 homes, compared with a revised figure of 587,000 in August.

But the rate was still down by 28.2% on the 822,000 homes started in September 2008, the Commerce Department said.

Analysts had expected a rate of more than 600,000 housing starts.

"It doesn’t bode too well. We really want to see an uptick here, as obviously housing is so important," said Dan Cook at IG Markets.

"If we can get more starts, we’re putting more people to work and that would be very positive, and unfortunately we just didn’t see that today."

New applications for building permits, considered a good sign of future activity, fell by 1.2% in September.

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BRUSSELS – The world’s biggest brewer AB InBev said Thursday it has agreed to sell its Central European operations to CVC Capital Partners in a transaction which could exceed $3 billion.

Under the agreement announced Thursday, AB InBev will sell the brewing and distribution rights of brands like Stella Artois, Beck’s and Leffe in nine countries in order to pay off debt.

The Belgian-based brewer has been shedding assets to help pay for the $52 billion takeover of St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch that formed the company last year.

Under Thursday’s terms, the private equity firm acquires the operations for $2.23 billion with another $800 million contingent on the return on investment.

AB InBev CEO Carlos Brito said the move will enable the company "to exceed our stated commitment to achieve $7 billion in divestitures, while better focusing our resources toward our core markets."

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NetShelter adds to ad sales Google rolls out new display ad market IBM takes on Google Apps with LotusLive iNotes Yahoo Inc. informed users of the Xoopit email plugin that it will no longer be usable for Google Inc.’s Gmail. Sunnyvale-based Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) acquired Xoopit in July to get the plugin that lets users visually scan email by contents instead of subject lines. Until now it has been available for use with both Yahoo Mail and Gmail.

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The G20 group of leading and emerging economies is to take on a new role as a permanent body co-ordinating the world economy, a White House statement said.

It will take on the role previously carried out by the developed powerhouses of the G8 group.

The G20 is meeting in the US city of Pittsburgh for a two-day summit.

EU officials also announced a deal to shift the balance of voting in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) towards growing nations such as China.

But there will be no formal announcement that the G20 will replace the G8 until 2011, said the BBC’s economics editor Stephanie Flanders.

"The leaders would have liked formally to announce the handover today in Pittsburgh, but the Canadians – who are chairing the G8 next year – kicked up such a fuss that they had to fudge it," she said.

There will now be a G20 meeting on the sidelines of Canada’s G8 Summit next June, where most of the economic business of the day will be discussed. But, formally at least, the economic side of the G8 will live on another year.

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Qantas has publicly unveiled its long-awaited new transtasman aircraft, adding more capacity and frequency to the highly competitive route.

The airline will have three new generation Boeing 737-800s by mid-October that will initially fly on the Auckland-Sydney and Auckland-Melbourne routes.

Compared with its existing 737s, the new aircraft will roughly carry 10 per cent more passengers and fly 10 per cent higher and faster. Importantly for yield, they are 10 per cent more efficient.

Qantas regional manager New Zealand Grant Lilly said three more aircraft would be added to the fleet by 2011. The airline currently flies the route with domestic configured 737s and larger 767s.

"We think for the Tasman the way to go is smaller jets with higher frequency."

The aircraft has 12 business class and 156 economy seats, all with new entertainment-on-demand screens.

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WASHINGTON – Regulators have approached big banks about borrowing billions to shore up the dwindling fund that insures regular deposit accounts.

The loans would go to the fund maintained by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that insure depositors when banks fail, said two industry officials familiar with the conversations, who requested anonymity because the plans are still evolving.

Regulators also are considering levying a special emergency fee on all banks, charging regular fees early or tapping a $100 billion credit line with the U.S. Treasury, the officials said.

FDIC spokesman Andrew Gray said that while borrowing from the banks "is an option, it’s not being given serious consideration." The board meeting where the plans will be discussed is scheduled for next week.

But a government official familiar with the FDIC board’s thinking said earlier Tuesday that the plan was being considered. He requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

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PITTSBURGH – An anti-war group plans to set up a tent city during the Group of Twenty economic summit this week to focus attention on the plight of women and children made refugees by war.

The group, Code Pink, will be among many groups and thousands of activists aiming to use the G-20 summit to spotlight causes including the environment and social injustice.

History shows protesters can successfully use media-saturated events to push their causes, such as when demonstrators at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul were credited with forcing South Korea’s shift to democracy, said Mauro Guillen, a globalization expert at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

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Cameron met their leader because they are no longer a threat. For the time being, unions accept that they have limited power.

The trade unions are in a dire position, with few options. They grumble about government policies, as they will at the TUC conference in Liverpool this week. But most union leaders still prefer Gordon Brown, however flawed, as Prime Minister to David Cameron, while knowing that it is the Tory leader they are likely to have to deal with from next spring.

Either way, unemployment will continue to rise, while a tight squeeze on government spending and public sector jobs is certain whichever party is in office.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — For more than a year, prosecutors have been cracking down on the corruption and kickbacks that thrived during the boom years in this Persian Gulf city-state. Dozens of executives have been arrested and charged in a high-profile effort to show that fraud will no longer be tolerated. Investigators say their cases have uncovered $3.58 billion that was stolen or used as bribe money.

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LONDON, Sept 12 (Reuters) – The chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland says Britain needs a slow recovery from recession and that a rapid bounce could generate further problems for the economy.

Stephen Hester, CEO of the 70-percent state owned bank, said if Britain failed to address its economic imbalances it faced a "Japanese lost decade" or another future downturn.

Recent bright economic data, showing a rise in house prices and consumer confidence, while the FTSE-100 index of leading shares has climbed above 5,000 for the first time in 11 months, has raised hopes that Britain is emerging from recession.

But Hester warned that any speedy recovery would present its own dangers and there should be a "slow rate of growth while the economy repairs itself".

"Arguably what we need as an economy is a gradual emergence from recession where the economy can complete the rebalancing that has not in any way been completed," he said in an interview with the BBC broadcast on Saturday.

"It’s possible that we actually enjoy a rather faster recovery where people are tempted to say ‘that was a bad nightmare behind us but don’t worry it’s gone and we can go back to where we were before’.

"That might happen, and if it does happen it will be dangerous because we won’t have fixed the problems that have just recently exploded in our face. Until we fix them the world is an unstable place and our economy is unstable."

Hester said there needed to be a situation where Britons saved more and borrowed less, while the government needed to get its budget deficit, expected to top 12 percent of gross domestic product, under control.

The issue of public spending has become a political battleground. The governing Labour Party says spending will have to be cut in the future while the opposition Conservatives have called for immediate reductions.

"Human beings find it extremely hard to deny themselves today in favour of a safer and calmer future, whether that’s pensions, whether that’s holidays, or in the case of government’s spending when governments have got to be elected.

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