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Poland’s lawmakers have approved a controversial government plan to raise the retirement age to 67 for most Poles.

The lower chamber of Parliament voted Friday 268 to 185 with 2 abstentions to approve changes sought by the pro-business government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which argues that delayed retirement will help Poles build up larger pensions and reduce state spending.

Trade unions have vehemently opposed the plan and were staging a noisy protest outside Parliament.

The current law allows women to retire at age 60 and men at 65. The armed forces and some other services have even more lenient regulations which the new law also seeks to toughen up.

The new law still needs approval from the Senate and from President Bronislaw Komorowski.

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Asian stocks swung between losses and gains Thursday, as investors weighed climbing borrowing rates in Spain and political turmoil in Greece against upbeat results at Japanese carmaker Toyota.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.2 percent to 9,065.73 after opening lower. South Korea’s Kospi also opened lower before settling flat at 1,950.03. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up less than 0.1 percent at 20,341.49.

But Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.4 percent to 4,292.40 and benchmarks in mainland China and Taiwan also rose.

“The Eurozone crisis remains in the spotlight, keeping sentiment under pressure,” strategists at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong wrote in a note to clients.

World markets have been roiled this week by political instability in Europe. Greece has been left without a government since elections on Sunday, adding to growing worries that it will drop out of the euro currency union or be forced out.

The turmoil shook markets in Spain, where the interest rate that the government must pay on benchmark 10-year bonds rose to an uncomfortably high level of 6.06 percent. Rates of above 7 percent are seen as unsustainable, and forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to ask for bailouts.

Toyota Motor Corp. rose 2.1 percent, a day after the carmaker said quarterly profit more than quadrupled and it made an upbeat forecast as it recovers from a sales plunge caused by the tsunami in Japan last year.

On Wall Street on Wednesday, the Dow closed lower for the sixth day in a row, down 0.8 percent at 12,835.06. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 0.7 percent to 1,354.58 and the Nasdaq composite average Nasdaq dropped 0.4 percent to 2,934.71.

Benchmark oil for June delivery was down 6 cents at $96.75 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 20 cents to finish at $96.81 per barrel in New York on Wednesday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $1.2952 from $1.2945 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar rose to 79.73 Japanese yen from 79.68 yen.

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U.S. service companies, which employ roughly 90 percent of the work force, expanded more slowly in April. Companies saw less growth in new orders and hired at a weaker pace.

The Institute for Supply Management says its index of non-manufacturing activity dropped to 53.5 last month from 56 in March. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion.

The ISM’s survey covers all sectors outside of manufacturing. That includes retail, construction, financial services, health care, and hotels.

The slowdown in services comes as consumers have reined in their spending a bit. Consumer spending rose in March, but by much less than in the two previous months.

Americans are spending more on goods, such as cars and appliances, but are holding back when it comes to services. A government report Monday showed that spending on services was flat in March.

The ISM’s services index reached the highest point in a year in February, when it was 57.3. Consumers stepped up their spending that month at the fastest pace in seven months.

And in the first quarter, Americans increased their spending at the fastest pace in a year. But most of those gains were in January and February. And Americans spent more while saving less, a trend that economists worry isn’t sustainable guaranteed online personal loans.

The job market is improving, but incomes are barely growing. That could weigh on consumer spending in the coming months, dragging on the services sector.

Manufacturing has been the driving force behind the economic recovery. Economists would like to see services firms contribute more. On Tuesday, the ISM said that the manufacturing sector expanded at its fastest pace in 10 months. Measures of new orders, production and employment all rose. But manufacturing accounts for only about 12 percent of U.S. output.

Services firms need to step up hiring to accelerate job gains and rapidly push down the unemployment rate. The service sector includes low-paying positions in retail and restaurants. But it also has higher-paying jobs in professions such as information technology, accounting and financial services.

The government will release the April employment jobs report on Friday. Economists are predicting that employers added 163,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate will remain 8.2 percent.

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McKendree University has acquired the 18-hole Locust Hills Golf Course in Lebanon for $1.4 million, nearly doubling the size of the school’s campus. 

McKendree bought the public golf course for its future development needs but plans to keep the course open for now, the school said in a statement. The golf course is located at 1015 Belleville St. and is adjacent to the school’s McKendree West student apartment complex on College Road.

The purchase increases the size of the school’s campus from 125 acres to 234 acres.

“Our immediate plans are to operate it as a public golf course and to make any necessary improvements or enhancements as we are able,” the university’s president, Dr. James Dennis, said in the statement.

Long-term, the school will evaluate potential educational uses for the property. “Owning the golf course allows us to offer our students a variety of educational opportunities in the future,” Dennis said in the statement. “Locust Hills has natural water features that our biology department could potentially use as an outdoor laboratory to study aquatic organisms and plant habitats. Our sport management majors could learn about golf course and recreational facilities management. It’s exciting to imagine the possibilities.”

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Oil prices rose to near $104 a barrel Tuesday in Asia after a successful Spanish debt sale eased fears that Europe’s debt crisis could flare again.

Benchmark oil for May delivery was up 62 cents to $103.55 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 10 cents to settle at $102.93 in New York on Monday.

Brent crude for June delivery was down 23 cents at $118.45 per barrel in London.

Spain sold euro3.2 billion ($4.2 billion) of 12- and 18-month bonds at an auction Tuesday, a day after a jump in Spanish yields sparked concern that the country may require an international bailout to avoid a debt default.

Stock markets, which oil traders often look to as a measure of overall investor sentiment, rose in early trading Tuesday in Europe.

Most analysts are forecasting a mild recession in Europe this year, but renewed contagion from the continent’s debt crisis could further hurt economic growth.

“Economic conditions in the big developed economies remain weak and there is potential for further downward revisions to crude oil demand,” National Australia Bank said in a report.

Investors are also mulling the impact of meetings last weekend about Iran’s nuclear program. Talks among Iran and six world powers didn’t produce any concrete agreements, but negotiators said the tone was better than previous meetings, and the sides agreed to meet again on May 23.

Concern that a military strike by Israel and the U.S. against Iran’s nuclear facilities would disrupt global crude supplies has helped push crude up from $75 in October. Iranian crude output has fallen in recent months as the U.S. and Europe begin to impose economic sanctions on OPEC’s second-biggest producer.

“While the recent Iran talks were ‘constructive’, they did not offer much in the way of providing markets with any sense of supply certainty,” NAB said.

In other energy trading, heating oil was up 1.2 cents at $3.13 per gallon and gasoline futures gained 0.5 cents at $3.27 per gallon. Natural gas fell 0.7 cents at $2.01 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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Zimbabwe has taken majority ownership of all foreign-owned mining companies, Zimbabwe’s black empowerment minister said Thursday, a move the prime minister told companies to ignore, saying it could create “anarchy in the industry” in the already ruptured economy.

Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said in a statement that all companies that did not meet a late 2011 deadline to submit proposals to cede a controlling stake to blacks have forfeited 51 percent of their shareholdings and are now “deemed to be owned by the state.”

Zimbabwe has large Australian, Canadian and South African mining interests _ including giants Rio Tinto, Canadile and Anglo American _ and with scores of small white-owned gold mines.

The empowerment drive has split the shaky three-year-old coalition government. Critics says it has scared off much-needed investment and is being used as a political ploy ahead of elections President Robert Mugabe wants this year.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader, immediately urged the nation to ignore Kasukuwere and said the empowerment laws did not allow him to “unilaterally nationalize private entities.”

“There is no reason to create panic among investors by projecting the image of a voracious government keen to grab compulsorily people’s companies without compensation,” he said. “It is not the policy of this government to nationalize the mining businesses or any other business.”

Tsvangirai said he took a serious view of attempts to incite the public to act unlawfully against mining businesses.

Kasukuwere’s statement “poses a real risk of creating anarchy in the industry” and his party in the power sharing coalition will take “corrective measures,” he said.

In his Thursday announcement, Kasukuwere said profits since Sept. 25 from the government’s new controlling shareholdings were also regarded as “property of the state.” But he said companies that made a loss since then would have to cover losses from their side, and not draw from the “indigenized portion” held by the state to pay debt.

There was no immediate reaction from mining companies on the eve of the Easter holiday. Many Zimbabwean businesses shut down early for the four-day break.

Mining firms depend on foreign investment to maintain and replace aging equipment not financed by revenues from mineral exports already subject to royalties and tax.

Tsvangirai said Zimbabwe needed policies that created jobs for the millions of unemployed in the country.

“They want massive investment in the country and not a political campaign platform that will only benefit the elite at the expense of the majority,” he said.

Economist John Robertson said Kasukuwere’s announcement is likely to be difficult to enforce no checking account payday advance.

“It may be bullying to scare companies into handing over shares,” he said.

He said many firms let the Sept. 25 deadline pass because the government _ reeling under debt after a decade of economic turmoil _ didn’t offer payment for shares as required under the empowerment laws.

“The money isn’t here to pay or to develop the mines if they are nationalized in the same way commercial farms were deemed state land. Only foreigners have the money and they won’t bring it to have half of it taken from them,” he said.

The agriculture-based economy went into meltdown after Mugabe ordered seizures of thousands of white-owned farms in 2000. Many seizures turned violent.

Robertson described the empowerment drive in its present form as “dishonest” and said it will likely lead to mines being left to stagnate, with worsening poverty for all but an elite minority gaining foreign assets.

“Tens of thousands of our young people will be disempowered by being denied skills training and jobs,” he said.

Last month, Zimbabwe’s biggest platinum producer said it had reached an “acceptable” agreement with the government to yield 51 percent ownership to blacks.

South Africa’s Implats, owner of 87 percent of the Zimbabwe producer Zimplats, said a joint technical team of experts from both sides was working out methods of transferring a majority stake worth at least $500 million.

But Implats chief executive David Brown has said the transfer won’t take place if Zimbabwe doesn’t pay up, adding international legal steps could be taken if Zimplats is forcibly nationalized without payment.

Zimbabwe and South Africa are the world’s largest suppliers of platinum, a corrosion-resistant metal with a wide range of industrial uses that is priced in the same range as gold.

Zimplats employs 8,000 workers in Zimbabwe.

Foreign cash inflows have dwindled in recent months amid uncertainty over the security of possible investments.

Tourism, now the second-biggest hard currency earner after mining since agricultural exports collapsed, has been affected by political and economic uncertainty and security concerns ahead of the elections proposed by Mugabe. Tensions and intimidation have heightened this year, rights groups say.

Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi said Wednesday that Westerners were being discouraged by their governments from visiting Zimbabwe.

“We all know what happens when a tourism destination is plagued by insecurity,” he said.

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Federal Reserve policymakers are worried that recent strong gains in hiring could fizzle if U.S. economic growth doesn’t pick up.

Minutes of the Fed’s March 13 meeting show that members expressed those concerns before sticking with a plan to keep interest rates at record lows until at least late 2014.

A couple of members said they want to take further steps to boost the economy if conditions worsen or inflation remains tame, according to the minutes, which were released Tuesday.

Stocks fell further after the minutes were released. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 105 points to 13,159.

The Fed sketched a slightly sunnier view of the economy after its last meeting, largely because of the best three months of hiring in two years. But members noted that there have been similar bursts of hiring in the past two years that ended up fading.

The readout from the Fed’s last meeting largely echoed a speech Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered last week to a gathering of economists.

The Fed is concerned that the recovery could falter, as it did last year. Americans aren’t receiving meaningful pay increases. Gas prices are high. And Europe’s debt crisis could weigh on the U.S. economy.

As long as inflation remains tame, analysts think the Fed will likely hold interest rates down to give the economy more support. Most economists don’t think Fed officials will change their interest-rate policy at their next meeting on April 24-25 and will ease credit only if the economy slows further.

Still, the outlook for the economy is improving.

Employers added an average of 245,000 jobs a month from December through February pay day loans. The unemployment rate has fallen nearly a full percentage point since summer, to 8.3 percent.

The government will report Friday on the job market in March. Many economists believe that report will show another strong month of job creation with a net gain of 210,000 jobs. They expect the unemployment rate will hold steady at 8.3 percent.

U.S. consumers boosted their spending in February by the most in seven months, raising expectations for stronger growth at the start of the year.

Americans spent more even as their income barely grew. To make up the difference, many saved less.

Many people are more confident in the economy, despite stagnant wages and higher gas prices. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey index rose last month to its highest level since February 2011.

The economy grew at an annual pace of 3 percent in the October-December quarter. Most economists expect slightly slower growth in the current January-March quarter.

Bernanke said the combination of modest economic growth and rapid declines in unemployment is something of a puzzle. Normally, it takes growth of roughly 4 percent annual growth to lower the rate by 1 percentage point over a year.

Bernanke cautioned that he doesn’t expect the unemployment rate to keep falling at its current pace without much stronger growth and more robust hiring.

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Dubai’s DryDocks World has secured support from a significant majority of creditors to implement its $2.2 billion debt restructuring, the state-owned shipyard operator said Saturday.

The company, a division of the emirate’s debt-laden Dubai World conglomerate, has been in talks with lenders for months to hammer out new terms on the debt. It didn’t provide details of the revised repayment terms or say how many lenders agreed to the deal.

While it has sufficient support to implement the restructuring, a “small minority” of lenders have not signed on to the plan, the company said.

“The group has always sought the support of all its syndicated lenders and its proposals were designed to achieve that,” Chairman Khamis Juma Buamim said in a statement. “The group remains confident the absence of support from this minority will have no impact on the … restructuring.”

DryDocks’ debt talks were complicated by a lawsuit by one of its creditors, Monarch Alternative Capital, which was seeking about $45 million it was owed on line pay day loans. A British court ruled in Monarch’s favor earlier this year.

DryDocks World operates the Middle East’s largest shipyard in Dubai, where it builds and repairs ships and oil drilling rigs. It also owns shipyards in Singapore and Indonesia, and other Asian businesses including a fleet of more than 100 vessels, including tankers, cargo ships, tugboats and barges.

Its parent company, Dubai World, sent markets reeling in 2009 when it acknowledged it couldn’t pay back billions it owed. It signed an agreement to restructure some $25 billion in debt last March. Subsidiary companies such as DryDocks World have since tried to retool the terms on their own piles of debt.

Credit rating firm Moody’s Investors Service in December estimated that Dubai and its many state-linked companies owe creditors at least $101.5 billion.

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The economy grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the final three months of 2011, the best pace in a year and a half. But that growth has likely slowed in the current quarter.

Businesses have been restocking their shelves more slowly and shipping fewer long-lasting manufactured goods. In addition, Europe’s debt crisis and weaker growth in Asia have slowed demand for U.S. exports.

Stronger hiring in the first two months of the year probably hasn’t offset those weaknesses. That’s because Americans’ pay has barely kept pace with inflation even as gas prices have spiked. So consumer spending, which drives about 70 percent of economic activity, probably hasn’t increased much from the end of last year.

Most economists expect growth to pick up later this year as further hiring lifts the economy.

The Commerce Department reported no change Thursday in its previous growth estimate for the October-December quarter. The 3 percent annual rate was the strongest since the spring of 2010. Slower growth in exports than previously estimated was offset by stronger business investment.

Still, economists expect growth has probably slowed to 2 percent or less in the current January-March quarter.

A key reason for that: Businesses haven’t been restocking their shelves as fast as they did at the end of last year. Many had slashed inventories over the summer out of fear that the economy was on the verge of another recession. When that didn’t happen, many stepped up restocking. Inventory building was a key driver of growth in the October-December quarter.

Even though businesses are still replenishing their shelves, the pace has likely slowed. That has likely slowed growth this quarter.

Businesses also are investing less in machinery and equipment this year after a tax credit expired at the end of last year. Orders for durable goods plunged in January. Though orders rebounded in February, that increase didn’t offset the entire January decline. And shipments of core capital goods, a gauge of business investment, grew sluggishly in the three months that ended in February, economists said. That’s also likely holding back growth this quarter.

One bright spot is that hiring has picked up. The economy has added an average of 245,000 jobs per month from December through February. The unemployment rate has fallen by nearly a full percentage point since the summer to 8.3 percent, the lowest level in three years.

The Labor Department said Thursday that the number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell to 359,000 last week, the lowest level in four years. That suggests March was another solid month for hiring.

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The unemployment rates in almost all metropolitan areas dropped in January from a year earlier, and a majority were lower than the national rate, the Labor Department said on Friday.

Jobless rates decreased in 345 of the 372 areas, which typically include a city and its surrounding suburbs, and those in Decatur, Alabama, and Monroe, Michigan, dropped the most.

At the same time, 201 areas recorded January unemployment rates below the U.S. rate of 8.8 percent, not seasonally adjusted. Frequently, the Labor Department will adjust jobs numbers to account for seasonal factors such as holiday hiring or weather.

The seasonally adjusted national jobless rate in February and January was 8.3 percent.

While the effects of the recession that began in 2007 were nearly uniform across the country, the recovery has been far more uneven, with areas where housing had fueled the local economies still hurting fast cash advance.

The states of Nevada and California have the highest unemployment rates in the country, and their limping job markets can be seen on the local level.

El Centro, an inland town in southern California, held the highest unemployment rate in the country in January, 26.4 percent, followed by Arizona’s Yuma, where the rate was 24.5 percent. Meanwhile, 10 of the other 11 areas with jobless rates of at least 15 percent or more were in California.

Of the 49 areas with a population of 1 million or more, Nevada’s Las Vegas-Paradise region had the highest jobless rate, 13.1 percent.

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