Frankfurt - Signs of confidence returning to share markets emerged Monday as stocks in Europe and Wall Street gained ground following solid rises across Asia.

By late afternoon trading, Europe's blue-chip Stoxx 50 was up 3.7 per cent at 2349 points as an element of calm characterized share trading amid signs of an easing in the global credit crunch.

Triggered by the surge in defaults in risky US mortgages, the credit squeeze has been a key factor in unleashing the recent round of world share market turmoil.

The pickup in global shares Monday also came after a tumultuous week on stock markets and with companies around the world continuing to roll out third-quarter corporate results.

Frankfurt - Signs of confidence returning to share markets emerged Monday as stocks in Europe and Wall Street gained ground following solid rises across Asia.

Belgrade/Frankfurt  - The German air carrier XL Airways confirmed that one of its aircraft had to make an emergency landing Saturday in Belgrade.

The Frankfurt-based firm said its Boeing 737-800 with 188 passengers and crew landed following a warning of an unspecified "engine problem" in the cockpit, spokesman Asger Schubert told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Schubert denied Serbian media reports claiming that one of the plane's engines caught fire.

Frankfurt - European shares are ending a tumultuous trading week
Friday on a volatile note after a late surge on Wall Street and mixed
performance by stocks across Asia.

Frankfurt - The Frankfurt Book Fair opened for business Wednesday, with world publishers to spend five days trading book rights and discussing how to cope with the internet age.

Some 280,000 visitors are expected at the annual event, which is being held in Germany for the 60th time. This year Turkey is guest of honour.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul helped inaugurate the event Tuesday evening at a ceremony addressed by Turkey's internationally best-known novelist, Orhan Pamuk, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Making a virtue out of all its contradictions, Turkey has sent hundreds of authors to the fair and is promoting itself to the German reading public this week as "fascinatingly multi-coloured."