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Inflation in the 17 countries that use the euro was unchanged in the year to January at 2.7 percent, official figures showed Wednesday, reinforcing market expectations that the European Central Bank will decide to keep interest rates unchanged at its next policy meeting.

The first estimate for the month from Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, was in line with forecasts and the euro was little changed around the $1.3125 mark.

Inflation has been running above the European Central Bank’s target of “just below 2 percent” since December 2010.

Even so, the eurozone’s central bank cut its main benchmark rate in November and December to a record low of 1 percent as it tries to shore up the foundering eurozone economy.

Further interest rate reductions from the bank, which is led by Mario Draghi, are widely anticipated, especially if inflation falls back further as last year’s energy and food price rises drop out of the annual comparison.

The bank announces its latest interest rate decision on Feb. 9 and the markets are pricing in a second straight month of no change.

One reason inflation is expected to moderate further toward target is the state of the eurozone economy. Many economists think the 17-nation bloc will slide back into recession this year despite some relatively optimistic signals in a raft of manufacturing surveys Wednesday. And with unemployment over 10 percent, the pressure coming from wage demands is likely to remain modest.

“The region is still in a precarious position and is unlikely to avoid falling back into another recession this year,” said Ben May, European economist at Capital Economics.

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Japan’s industrial production rebounded 4 percent in December from November and household spending increased for a second month, suggesting the still-weak economy is gaining some steam after last year’s tsunami disaster and flooding in Thailand that disrupted manufacturers’ supply chains.

Output of automobiles, cell phones and semiconductors drove the gains last month after production fell 2.7 percent in November. Manufacturers project further production increases in January and February, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said Tuesday.

But Japan’s unemployment rate edged up to 4.6 percent and Junko Nishioka, economist at RBS Japan Securities, cautioned that the economic outlook was “mixed.”

While she was heartened by the 0.5 percent uptick in family spending, Nishioka said prospects for Japan’s vital manufacturing sector remained tentative amid weak export demand short term personal loans.

“The pace of recovery will be slow,” she said. “So far, we’re seeing some recovery in the auto sector and electronic components, but still it’s still not enough to compensate for the gap recorded after the March disaster and the Thai flooding.”

The factory data showed that shipments grew 4.5 percent and inventories fell 2.9 percent, both healthy indicators. Broadly speaking, production was led by strength in the electronics, automobile and general machinery sectors, the report showed.

Looking ahead, manufacturers predicted that industrial output would rise 2.5 percent in January and another 1.2 percent in February, according to a METI survey.

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JEFFERSON CITY - The gambling industry will fight Gov. Jay Nixon’s proposal to raise casino entrance fees by $1 per patron to help finance the state’s veterans homes.

Casino lobbyist Mike Winter told the House Veterans Committee on Tuesday that the proposal amounts to “a bottom-line hit of $53 million for our companies” each year and could prompt cuts in marketing, capital projects and staffing at the state’s 12 casinos.

Legislators said they’re open to compromise but made clear that they’re adamant about finding a dedicated source of money to operate the state’s seven nursing homes for veterans and possibly, build a new home to accommodate a mounting waiting list.

“Our veterans are out of money in 2013,” said Rep. Charlie Davis, R-Webbb City. “If something doesn’t happen, where are they going to go?”

The Missouri Veterans Commission’s $80 million budget is funded roughly 40 percent from federal money, 35 percent from charges paid by residents of veterans homes and 25 percent by the state.

In recent years, as tax collections have lagged, the state has reduced the general revenue it puts into the veterans commission’s budget, from nearly $31 million in 2009 to $18.6 million this year.

The state now wants to tap the veterans commission’s surplus to help pay operating expenses at the homes, which include one in Bellefontaine Neighbors in St. Louis County.

But that trust fund was designed to cover repair bills when a boiler breaks at a veterans home, as well as the state’s share of construction costs for any new homes. The fund also pays operating costs at the state’s six veterans cemeteries and grants for local programs that help veterans sign up for federal benefits.

While the trust fund now stands at $17 million, it will run dry by June 2013 if it is used at the projected rate of spending, Larry Kay, the commission’s executive director told the House committee on Tuesday.

Kay said the veterans commission needs a funding source that provides at least $35 million a year “just to stay even.”

Nixon’s budget proposal, which he released last week, would pump about $50 million a year into the veterans commission’s budget through a $1 fee increase for every gambler who goes through the casino turnstiles.

The current entrance fee is $2, with half going to the state and half to the home-dock city or county. Last year the veterans trust fund got $6.5 million under a law that divvies up the state’s share of those proceeds.

Winter, who lobbies for the Missouri Gaming Association, noted that casinos also pay a tax equaling 21 percent of their adjusted gross revenue, with most of that money going toward elementary and secondary education.

Combining the tax and the entrance fee, Missouri’s effective tax rate is about 27 percent for casinos now, which he portrayed as high compared to states such as Nevada, which he said charges only 6.75 percent.

However, the Missouri Gaming Commission’s annual report showed Missouri is competitive with most nearby states.

At 27.18 percent, Missouri’s effective tax rate is lower than Illinois (33.92 percent) and Indiana (31.31 percent) but higher than Kansas (25.08 percent), Iowa (22.33 percent) and Mississippi (11.94 percent), according to the latest report.

Legislators pointed out that casinos could pass any entrance fee increase on to their patrons. But Winter said they have no plans to do so. They absorb the current $2 fee.

The gambling industry got some backing from the Missouri Chamber of Commerce & Industry, which said veterans homes were a statewide responsibility that should not be borne by “a single sector.”

But Dewey Riehn, who represents the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said a higher admission fee wouldn’t break casinos, which pulled in $1.8 billion last year.

“If they think they can convince me that a $1 entry fee will cause them to close boats, that’s ridiculous,” Riehn said.

Missouri has the 14th largest population of veterans, according to federal statistics.

In addition to St. Louis County, the state operates veterans homes in Cameron, Cape Girardeau, Mexico, Mt. Vernon, St. James and Warrensburg.

The state’s 1,350 beds are 99 percent full; there are 1,691 people on the waiting list.

In addition to a higher casino entrance fee, legislators are considering asking state voters to pass a constitutional amendment establishing a special Missouri Lottery ticket, with proceeds earmarked for veterans programs.

The sponsor, Rep. Sheila Solon, R-Blue Springs, said a dedicated lottery ticket would not provide a “total fix” but had helped pump money into veterans programs in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and Texas.

“We need to take care of our veterans,” said Solon, who also sponsors the casino fee increase. “These brave heroes have defended us.”

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An Iraqi police official says gunmen have attacked the house of a police officer near the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, killing one of his guards.

Kirkuk’s police commander Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir says the officer was unharmed in Saturday’s attack in the predominantly Sunni town of Hawija, a former insurgent stronghold located 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Baghdad.

Suspected Sunni insurgents have frequently targeted Iraqi security forces to undermine the confidence in the Shiite-dominated government and its efforts to protect people from violence without American backup payday loans in one hour.

Attacks have surged amid an escalating political crisis in Iraq. At least 160 people have been killed since the beginning of the year, raising fears of civil war a month after U.S. soldiers left.

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The decision by Standard & Poor’s to cut the credit ratings of a number of euro countries and to strip France of its cherished top-tier standing met with a fairly calm market response Monday as attention turned towards Greece’s difficulties in thrashing out a deal with private creditors to reduce the value of their holdings of Greek debt

Europe’s debt crisis will likely remain the focus of attention across markets all week as a number of bond auctions are due at the same time as Greece tries to clinch a debt deal with its cast of creditors.

Monday is the first opportunity for traders to respond to S&P’s move, which came late Friday.

Analysts said the downgrades had been widely expected, especially in the bond markets, so there was very little shock at S&P’s announcement to strip France of its treasured triple-A rating and to cut its view on a raft of other euro countries, including Italy. One bright spot was that Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, retained its triple-A rating and had its outlook upgraded to stable from negative.

“After weeks of prevarication and lots of rumors, Standard and Poor’s finally put markets out of their misery on Friday,” said Michael Hewson, markets analyst at CMC Markets. “The surprise is it took so long.”

As a result, the response in the markets was fairly sanguine. In early trading Monday, the Stoxx 50 index of leading European shares was flat at 2,397 while the euro was up 0.2 percent on the day at $1.2670

A bigger headache for markets at the moment is whether Greece can clinch a deal with its creditors payday loan. Last October, Greece’s partners in the eurozone sanctioned a deal whereby Greece’s creditors agree a deal to reduce the value of their Greek debt holdings so that the country’s debt burden is reduced.

The deal with private investors, known as the Private Sector Involvement, or PSI, aims to reduce Greece’s debt by euro100 billion ($126.5 billion) by swapping private creditors’ bonds for new ones with a lower value. It is a key part of a euro130 billion international bailout, the second one for Greece.

It is expected that talks on the PSI will resume this coming week. On Tuesday, representatives of Greece’s creditors _ the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund _ will visit Greece for yet another round of inspections of its efforts at fiscal and structural reform and negotiations for the next tranche, the seventh, from the first bailout.

Negotiations over the second bailout will start after the PSI deal is clinched. Without a deal, Greece has been told it won’t get the next tranche of money due from its first bailout.

Without that money, Greece would find it more or less impossible to pay a big bond redemption in March and would face the prospect of defaulting on its debts, potentially triggering more mayhem in financial markets.

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Every auto show, these days, is "all about plug-in cars and hybrids," they say. Everyone’s gawking at the cherry on top while few notice how different the ice cream underneath is.

At the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, you can see the auto industry changing — deeply, quickly and probably forever. The reasons are stricter fuel economy regulations and changing attitudes toward environmental responsibility.

Yes, those are things car companies talk about when showing off cars such as the new Ford Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid or the Acura NSX hybrid performance car concept.

But fuel economy and the environment are, just as much or maybe even more, the reasons that cars such as the Dodge Dart are equipped with fuel-efficient 4-cylinder engines, or why General Motors (, Fortune 500) unveiled the very small Buick Encore compact SUV.

They’re also why there was one notable omission from this year’s Detroit show. Not a single truck or large SUV was unveiled at any of the show stands this year. There have been auto shows in recent memory at which it seemed there were nothing but massive trucks rolling out under every drape.

Cool cars from the Detroit Auto Show

There were SUVs, of course — there always will be — such as the Buick Encore.

There was also the new Nissan Pathfinder, but even that roomy, 3-row SUV proves the point that fuel economy has become the big bogie. The Pathfinder you see on the roads today is a truck-based vehicle built to withstand real off-road use. The new one rides on car-like engineering, which will allow it to be lighter and less thirsty.

Engines themselves are getting smaller, too. Even the venerable Bentley is downsizing. The British ultra-luxury automaker unveiled the Continental GT V8 at the show.

Under the hood of this car is a relatively modest twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 which, Bentley estimates, will quaff 40% less premium than the 6.0-liter V12 in the less stingy version of the car. Even with the V8, performance will still be "exhilarating," Bentley promises.

In more pedestrian cars, the "bigger engine" option is pretty much out. Today, the Ford Fusion is available with a V6 engine. The new one will not be. Only various 4-cylinder engines will be offered. The Dodge Dart, as well, will be available only with 4-cylinder engines.

Even performance is being subtly redefined. It used to be that performance was measured in one, single, easily stated number: horsepower. In auto shows past, carmakers would compete to see who could unveil the car with most eye-popping horsepower number.

And that’s not entirely over. Shelby American Inc. was on hand with its display of modified Ford (, Fortune 500) Mustangs with horsepower outputs stretching all the way to a gut-crunching 800.

The "new performance" could be found at the Subaru and Toyota () stands, where the identical Subaru BRZ and Scion FRS were on display. These cars put out a relatively slight 200 horsepower out of 2.0-liter flat-four engines. That’s an impressive figure, given the size of the engine and the fact that it doesn’t have a power-boosting turbocharger or supercharger.

But these cars aren’t about zero-to-60 times, Scion and Subaru representatives say. They’re about driving fun. Engineers put the engine as low as possible in the car to create the lowest possible center of gravity, the idea being to optimize cornering while still going quick enough to produce a healthy grin.

This new trend in less showy fuel economy was perhaps best exhibited in the show’s opening moment. A jury of automotive journalists awarded the North American Car and Truck of the Year Awards to the Hyundai Elantra and the Land Rover Range Rover Evoque.

The Elantra, a compact car, gets 40 miles a gallon without sacrificing driving fun. The Range Rover Evoque uses a turbocharged 4-cylinder engine to provide enjoyable driving performance while still getting an impressive — in this context — 22 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving.

Of course, there are still those plug-in cars. But with standard, run-of-the-mill gasoline-powered cars pushing the fuel economy bar ever higher, they seem likely to remain car show sideshows for a few years longer. 

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Stock markets shrugged off signs of a slowing Chinese economy on Tuesday, as investors hoped for strong corporate earnings from the U.S. and looked to a new round of talks in Berlin for progress in solving Europe’s debt crisis.

The U.S. economy has shown new signs of strength recently, and investors are hoping that will boost corporate earnings results due to be announced in coming weeks. In particular, signs that the U.S. labor market is improving has raised the possibility of a recovery in American consumer spending, one of the main motors of global economic growth.

Britain’s FTSE 100 index of leading shares rose 1.0 percent to 5,668.89 and Germany’s DAX rose 2.4 percent to 6,158. France’s CAC-40 rose 2.1 percent to 3,194, while indices in Spain, Italy, Switzerland and elsewhere across Europe also recorded gains betwen 1 and 2 percent.

Ahead of the opening bell, Wall Street appeared set for a higher opening as well. Dow Jones industrial futures rose 0.5 percent to 12,402 and S&P 500 futures gained 0.6 percent to 1,283.10.

Moods were tempered by relatively gloomy indicators out of Europe.

The European Central Bank said Tuesday that the amount of overnight deposits that the region’s banks held with it rose to euro481.93 billion ($613 billion) on Monday, breaking the record euro463.56 billion set only a day before.

The high deposits mean banks are keeping spare cash in a safe place even though they earn low interest. They also reflect large amounts of cash put into the banking system from ECB emergency loans of euro489 billion taken up by more than 500 banks in late December.

Dutch electronics giant Royal Philips Electronics NV kicked of corporate Europe’s earnings season by warning that its fourth quarter profits were worse than expected due to a weak European market that made it difficult to charge customers as much as it wanted to for light bulbs.

“Our expected fourth quarter financial results have been affected by the weakness in Europe, which has impacted our health care business, as well as pricing in our consumer lighting business,” said Chief Executive Frans van Houten in a statement.

Philips shares fell 6 percent to euro14.715 in early trading in Amsterdam.

On the day that international debt inspectors were returning to Athens, Greece successfully raised euro1.625 billion ($2.07 billion) in the sale of 26-week treasury bills, at a marginally lower interest rate than a similar auction last month.

Debt-crippled Greece relies on international rescue loans to keep solvent. Although unable to issue long-term debt due to incredibly high borrowing costs, it maintains a market presence through regular treasury bill auctions business card templates.

Greece’s situation will be discusses at an “informal” meeting between Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde in Berlin Tuesday evening.

Ahead of that meeting, Fitch Ratings said a number of euro countries, including Italy, may see their credit ratings downgraded by one or two notches by the end of this month as they struggle to cope with the debt crisis.

Fitch’s head of sovereign ratings David Riley says Tuesday the agency will give its verdict on several countries by the end of January. Fitch currently has Italy, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Slovenia and Cyprus on so-called “ratings watch negative.”

Much interest in the markets centers on Italy, which Riley says is the “front line” of Europe’s debt crisis.

Overnight markets in Asia were marginally higher thanks to improving economic data out of the U.S., said Cameron Peacock of IG Markets in Melbourne.

The optimism was tempered by news that China’s import growth decelerated sharply in December in a new sign the world’s second-largest economy is slowing.

The customs agency said December imports rose 11.8 percent over a year ago, down from November’s 22.1 percent gain. Exports rose 13.4 percent, down only marginally from the previous month’s rate.

The country’s politically sensitive global trade surplus widened to $16.5 billion.

Weaker Chinese demand for imports reflects a slowdown in rapid domestic economic growth after Beijing tightened lending and investment curbs to prevent overheating. A slump in global demand for Chinese goods has prompted the government to reverse course and promise measures to shore up growth.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index, reopening after a three-day holiday weekend, added 0.4 percent to close at 8,422.26. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.7 percent to 19,004.28 while South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.5 percent to 1,853.22. Australia’s S&P ASX 200 rose 1.1 percent at 4,152.20. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan, and Indonesia also posted gains.

Benchmark crude for February delivery rose $1.46 to $102.77 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 25 cents to settle at $101.31 in New York on Monday.

In currency trading, the euro rose to $1.2799 from $1.2762 late Monday in New York. The dollar fell to 76.85 yen from 76.89 yen.

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Delivery companies such as FedEx Corp. (FDX) and United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) added 42,200 jobs to payrolls in December, about a fifth of the total for all employers last month. History indicates the gain will be followed by a similar-sized loss in January.

Service industries in the U.K. grew at the fastest pace in five months in December and strengthened in the U.S., suggesting their economies are partly withstanding to the euro-area debt crisis.

A gauge of U.K. services activity based on the survey of purchasing managers (PMITSUK) rose to 54 from 52.1 in November, Markit Economics and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply said today in London. A U.S. services index rose to 52.6 in December from 52 the previous month.

The data suggest the U.K. economy strengthened in December after surveys earlier this week showed construction and manufacturing improved. Still, the euro-area crisis is clouding the outlook for the global recovery. The Bank of England said today banks may toughen loan terms because of the debt turmoil, hampering growth, while some Federal Reserve officials have said prospective economic conditions may warrant

Rupert Murdoch might be tweeting his billionaire media mogul thoughts to the world, but his wife, Wendi Deng, isn