Traders from North Korea visit Yuan Huan's shop in the Chinese border city of Dandong several times a month to place orders, bringing their own translators and wads of cash.

A majority of businesses are yet to change their strategic planning due to Britain's decision to leave the European Union, a survey of chief financial officers by Thomson Reuters showed.

Australia said on Thursday it would strengthen its money laundering laws, including bringing bitcoin providers under the government's financial intelligence unit, days after a fresh scandal at one of the country's biggest banks.

HMD Global, the Finnish start-up looking to reinvigorate the Nokia phone brand, unveiled the Nokia 8 on Wednesday, hoping to cash in on rising consumer demand for high-quality audio and video features.

The British Chambers of Commerce said on Thursday that exporters' confidence has softened slightly, due to concerns about currency fluctuations and a shortage of skilled workers.

India has banned the export of gold products with a purity above 22 carats in a move a trade group said was a bid to curb a practice known as "round tripping".

US President Donald Trump disbanded two high-profile business advisory councils on Wednesday after several chief executives quit in protest over his remarks blaming weekend violence in Virginia not only on white nationalists but also on anti-racism activists who opposed them.

A startup backed by Tony Fadell, one of the fathers of the Apple iPod, plans to announce Wednesday it is working with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Foxconn parent Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd and others on a new way for mobile phones to transfer large

China has given those who bet against the yuan a bloody nose this year thanks to policy moves and intervention by the authorities. And yet, many traders and investors are still tipping the Chinese currency to decline against the US dollar in the next year.

Japan has posted its longest economic expansion in over a decade on the back of a pickup in household and company spending, data showed Monday.

Strong household and state spending consolidated Germany's role as the euro zone's growth engine in the second quarter, helping Chancellor Angela Merkel to burnish her economic credentials less than six weeks before an election.

Trade tensions between the United States and China heated up on Tuesday as Beijing warned that it "will not sit idle" if a US probe into its intellectual property practices leads to sanctions.

Uber agreed to implement new data protection measures to settle complaints that it failed to prevent improper snooping on driver and customer information, officials said Tuesday.

Gains against the yen and a weakened British pound led a broad rise in the US dollar on Tuesday, helped by an easing of the tensions around North Korea that last week drove capital towards Switzerland and Japan.

New US sanctions on Moscow have forced Russian business chiefs to accept that Donald Trump's rise to power is not about to produce a "Trump Bump" in foreign investment.

Asia would be the biggest beneficiary of any potential sanctions by the United States on Venezuela's oil sector, said traders and analysts, as exports from the South American Opec member could be redirected to the region, filling a vacuum left by producer supply cuts.

Britain's annual inflation rate steadied in July, with an expected rise failing to materialise as the pound recovers from a Brexit-fuelled slump, official data showed Tuesday.

American consumers spent at a brisk pace in July, pushing US retail sales to their biggest increase in seven months, according to preliminary figures released Tuesday.

Britain said on Tuesday it would seek a "temporary customs union" with the European Union for one or two years after Brexit in an opening gambit for negotiations that got a cold response from Brussels.

Titan Co, India's biggest listed jeweller, expects its jewellery sales to rise by 20-30 percent in 2017/18 fiscal year ending March, as it plans to add more than two dozen retail stores to boost its presence in small towns, a senior company official said.