Tokyo  - In the West, most people his age enjoy their well-deserved retirement. But 80-year-old Kazuo Kashio has no time for that.

"I have to continue for now, until the prospects for our company improve again," the president of Japanese electronics company Casio Computer Co says.

Kashio has been on the helm of the company, which he founded together with his three brothers in 1957, for more than 20 years.

Brasilia  - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched an ambitious two-year, 15-billion-dollar plan Wednesday to build affordable housing.

The programme has the two-fold goal of stimulating the construction sector amid the global economic slowdown and alleviating Brazil's severe housing shortage.

Experts estimate that 8 million new homes are needed to satisfy demand in South America's most populous country.

Washington - US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent the US currency tumbling Wednesday by saying he was open to enlarging the International Monetary Fund's currency reserves, but rallied again as he clarified the dollar will remain "the world's dominant reserve currency."

His comments at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York were in response to China's suggestion that a new global currency reserve replace the dollar in order to guard against fluctuations in economic crises.

Berlin  - The global economic crisis was precipitated in part by "massive speculative fluctuations in international energy and commodity markets," former German environment minister Klaus Toepfer said Wednesday.

Speaking at an energy forum in Berlin, Toepfer said: "We need to radically rethink the global mechanisms for our energy supply system to avoid suffocating the incipient, desperately needed economic upturn.

Washington - Barack Obama, in his first overseas trip as US president next week, will be hoping foreign leaders show more patience for his economic policy prescriptions than he has received back home.

Obama leaves for a London summit of the world's 20 major economic powers with much of his domestic policy in a holding pattern, the result of a combination of administration missteps, conservative opposition and a groundswell of public anger against Wall Street.

Berlin - European leaders travel to London next week for the Group of 20 (G20) summit as signs emerge that the global recession has caused new economic dividing lines to form across Europe.

Indeed, the summit of the world's major economies in the British capital's new trade centre comes amid a continuing stream of disastrous data and plunging economic indicators.