The European Central Bank had lent 7.3 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in ultra-cheap loans to banks in the latest round of its plan to kick-start lending to households and businesses.

Amazon.com Inc, under pressure from an activist shareholder to disclose its policies on gender pay equality, said on Wednesday its female employees earned as much as their male counterparts, according to a survey it recently conducted.

Japanese trading firm Mitsubishi Corp said on Thursday it would post its first ever annual loss in the year to March 31, totalling 150 billion yen ($1.33 billion), hurt by massive writedowns from a slump in commodities.

Low interest rates and exposure to substantial amounts of bad debt have severely weakened Europe's banks, and should cause them to re-evaluate their business models, the region's banking supervisor said Wednesday.

Former guerrilla fighter Gladis Giraldo says she ultimately realised that violence was not the answer.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the world's biggest maker of smartphones and memory chips, announced on Thursday that it plans to adopt a corporate culture akin to a startup, seeking to become more nimble as growth slows.

An activist hedge fund Thursday launched a bid to replace the entire Yahoo board of directors, saying the struggling Internet firm's management team has "failed to deliver results."

China has enough policy tools to keep the economy stable despite "deep rooted" structural problems and downward pressure, Premier Li Keqiang said on Thursday, channeling calm amid concerns about the country's slowdown.

An obscure corner of the US IPO market is getting a new lease on life as more Wall Street banks and institutional investors turn to blank-check acquisition vehicles, once the domain of only a few underwriters and hedge funds, for better fortunes.

Consumer confidence in Germany is beginning to feel the heat from global economic risks, a poll found on Thursday. "Optimism among German consumers faded somewhat in March," market research company GfK said in a statement.

Advertising agency Mediacom has become a certified Google Partner that has four indexes: display, search, video and analytics.

INDIA has defended its right to grant licences allowing local firms to override patents and make cheaper copies of drugs discovered by big Western drugmakers, and said reports to the contrary were "factually incorrect".

Nearly two-thirds of Britain's 350 biggest listed companies have failed to reach a target of having 25 percent of female board members, and four-fifths have two or fewer women on their boards, an inquiry into gender diversity said on Wednesday.

Nearly a decade after the iPhone broke the mould for mobile phones the question being asked is whether the evolution of the smartphone has finally come to an end, as even Apple now treats older, smaller 4-inch screens as something new.

MOBARAK Musa, a mobile telephone salesman from Syria, has spent 10 years working in Saudi Arabia, sending part of his wages back home to support his parents and three brothers. A shift in Saudi labour policy means he won't be able to do so for much longer.

New Zealand's Fonterra -- the world's largest dairy cooperative -- announced a 123 percent rise in interim profit on Wednesday but warned its farmers faced "unprecedented pressure" amid a slump in global milk prices.

Zimbabwe on Wednesday gave foreign businesses until April 1 to comply with controversial equity laws that compel them to cede majority stakes to locals or risk closure.

The US government will give Chinese telecom equipment and smartphone maker ZTE Corp a three-month reprieve on tough export restrictions it imposed this month, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday.

An estimated three out of four jobs globally are dependent on water, meaning that shortages and lack of access are likely to limit economic growth in the coming decades, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The biggest obstacle to women receiving equal wages is the sorting of the sexes into different jobs and industries, while differences in education, age and experience account for only a small portion of the gender pay gap, according to new research.