(Reuters) - Germany and France told Greece on Wednesday it should make up its mind by mid-December whether it wants to stay in the euro zone when Greeks vote on a 130-billion-euro ($178 billion) bailout. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel summoned George Papandreou for crisis talks in Cannes, before a G20 summit of major world economies, to push for rapid implementation of measures to tackle the euro zone debt crisis, which Athens has thrown into doubt.

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(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve looks set to take a breather from monetary stimulus measures on Wednesday, even if financial market turbulence heightens the chances of action later. The U.S. central bank's debate over the course of policy, including a potential shift toward using a concrete set of targets for inflation and the jobless rate as policy triggers, comes against a troubled global backdrop and with the U.S. economy far from full health.

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(Reuters) - MF Global Holdings Ltd failed to protect customer accounts by keeping them separate from its own funds, said a top U.S. exchange regulator, another shock for commodity markets scrambling to contain fallout from the brokerage's bankruptcy. The revelation on Tuesday by CME Group Inc suggests Jon Corzine's MF Global violated a central tenet of futures brokerages. It could erode confidence in a market that for decades has enjoyed a sterling reputation for safety.

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(Reuters) - U.S. private employers added more jobs than expected last month, while planned layoffs dropped sharply, underscoring the view the economy is on a path of slow growth. The ADP National Employment Report showed on Wednesday the economy's private sector added 110,000 jobs in October, topping economists' expectations for a gain of 101,000 jobs. ADP also increased September's job additions, to a gain of 116,000 from the previously reported 91,000.

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(Reuters) - Stocks tumbled about 2 percent on Tuesday after the deal to rescue Greece and prevent a wider sovereign debt crisis was thrown into disarray. Adding to the gloomy sentiment, factory activity in Asia's big export economies slowed to their weakest rate in nearly three years in October, while UK manufacturing suffered a sharp decline, reigniting fears of a global slowdown.

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(Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou faced calls from within his own party to step down on Tuesday after he threw the nation's euro zone membership into jeopardy by calling a referendum on a bailout package agreed only last week. A leading lawmaker from Papandreou's socialist party quit while two others said Greece needed a government of national unity followed by snap elections, which the opposition also demanded.

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(Reuters) - Jon Corzine's bid to revive his Wall Street career crashed and burned on Monday when his futures brokerage MF Global Holdings Ltd filed for bankruptcy protection following bad bets on euro zone debt. Corzine, 64, who once ran Goldman Sachs before becoming a U.S. senator and then governor of New Jersey, had been trying to turn the more than 200-year-old MF Global into a mini Goldman by taking on more risky trades.

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(Reuters) - The pace of growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector unexpectedly slowed in October, in line with trends in China, Britain and Canada in data reported on Tuesday. The Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity dipped to 50.8 from 51.6 the month before, coming in below forecasts for an improvement to 52.0, according to a Reuters poll of economists.

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(Reuters) - Prime Minister George Papandreou's call for a referendum on the latest Greek bailout plan has blown a potentially fatal hole in the euro zone's strategy to overcome its sovereign debt crisis. Whether or not a plebiscite takes place, and whatever the result, Papandreou's gamble guarantees long weeks of political uncertainty just when the 17-nation currency area was desperate for a period of calm to implement remedies agreed last week.

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(Reuters) - Stocks fell at the open on Monday as a spike in the U.S. dollar weighed on commodity prices and dried up bids on other risky assets. Further weighing on equities, the euphoria over Europe's plan to contain its sovereign debt crisis cooled and Italian and Spanish bond yields soared, prompting the European Central Bank to buy their debt.

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