Reuters - President Barack Obama, striking a hopeful note in a year-end weekly address, hailed foreign policy milestones while keeping pressure on Congress to further extend payroll tax cuts through the end of 2012.

Reuters - The euro could become the world's leading currency in the next decade if leaders of the single-currency bloc succeed in tightening fiscal integration, European Central Bank policymaker Christian Noyer said in an article to be published in the Journal du Dimanche.

Reuters - Washington will be the first state to require a minimum wage of more than $9 an hour when it joins seven other states on Sunday in automatically adjusting salaries to keep up with inflation.

Reuters - Switzerland and the United States need more time to negotiate a tax deal, Swiss finance minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told Swiss radio on Saturday, as the United States pushes for it to supply information on bank clients who are alleged to have evaded taxes.