US industrial giant General Electric will sell its appliances business to China's Haier Group for $5.4 billion, it said Friday, in one of the largest Chinese acquisitions of an American firm yet.

US retail sales fell in December to cap the slowest year of growth since 2009, amid persistent downward pressure on prices, the Commerce Department said Friday.

Ukraine on Friday launched the first cargo train to China that will bypass Russia along a new "Silk Road" meant to counter the Kremlin's most stringent trade embargo on Kiev to date. "This is a historic event," Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarskiy wrote on

India's government and the country's central bank will over the next few months add to banks' ability to lend, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday, addressing a conference on start-up businesses.

EU citizens would have a harder time finding jobs and the economy would suffer should Europe's internal passport-free zone collapse

The Russian government is looking to privatise a 19.5 percent stake in state oil giant Rosneft to ease a budget crunch as oil prices

Indian entrepreneurs will receive generous tax breaks and face dramatically reduced red tape when starting and closing a business, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Saturday, as he launched a pet initiative to bolster India's fast-growing startup scene.

Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a new international development bank seen as a rival to the US-led World Bank at a lavish ceremony on Saturday, as Beijing seeks to change the unwritten rules of global development finance.

Greek unions on Friday announced a general strike against a planned overhaul of the country's ailing pensions system.

European fruit growers could be able to export apples and pears to the United States later this year, the EU executive said on Saturday, following the publication of new US rules.

China's bank lending declined sharply in December from November, the central bank said on Friday, despite moves to keep the world's second largest economy from slowing further with looser monetary policy.

OIL prices plummeted to $29 a barrel on Friday on the likely resumption soon of Iranian oil exports into an already flooded market as international sanctions against Iran are lifted, dragging equity indices around the world sharply lower.

China's gross domestic product (GDP) totalled more than $10 trillion in 2015 and the economy grew by around 7 percent, with the services sector accounting for half of GDP, Premier Li Keqiang said on Saturday.

FOREIGN investment in Thailand plummeted last year, official data showed, the latest sign that the kingdom's once-vibrant economy continues to falter under prolonged military rule.

SLUMPING prices saved China more than $160 billion on its imports of commodities such as oil, iron ore, coal and copper last year, official figures showed on Wednesday.

A year on from "Frankenschock", when Switzerland's central bank sent global foreign exchange markets into a frenzy by abruptly ending its cap on the Swiss franc, the currency is one of the most stable in the world.

MetLife Inc, the largest US life insurer, plans to separate a substantial portion of its US retail business from the core company, saying on Tuesday that the "regulatory environment" helped drive its decision.

Stock markets in Europe and Asia rose and oil prices jumped on Wednesday after Chinese trade data cooled concerns over the world's second biggest economy, steadying money and currency markets in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Farmers in India's top sugar growing state of Maharashtra are being forced to replace cane with less water intensive crops, as a scorching drought drives authorities to hold back water from dams.

Russia will cut its spending by 10 percent this year, the finance minister said Wednesday, as prices for Moscow's key export commodity slumped to new lows.