Small business owners trying to break into international markets say US trade policies and the strong dollar affect their ability to export, states a report released Tuesday.

Earlier this year, engineers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc who track rivals' prices online got a rude surprise: the technology they were using to check Amazon.com several million times a day suddenly stopped working.

The European Union plans to launch more antitrust investigations into e-commerce companies after a two-year inquiry uncovered practices that restrict competition, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

Apple Inc became the first US company to top the $800 billion mark in market capitalization on Tuesday, slightly more than two years after it crossed the $700 billion threshold.

Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir suggested Wednesday that the International Monetary Fund was on board for financing Greece's third bailout.

Factory price inflation eased in April, data showed Wednesday, fuelling concerns about a growth slowdown in the world's number two economy and denting hopes for a pick-up a global reflation.

The industry body for Germany's powerful chemicals sector on Wednesday forecast a pick-up in growth for 2017, after a strong first quarter stoked by increased demand at home and abroad.

Brazil's annual inflation rate fell to 4.08 percent in April, lower than official estimates and raising hopes that the South American economic giant is emerging from a prolonged slump.

Europe's development bank predicted Wednesday a pick-up in economic growth in most of the regions where it operates this year as rebounding oil prices boost Russia and other commodity exporters.

Cotton planting in India, the world's biggest producer of the fibre, is likely to rise by 15 percent in the 2017/18 marketing season to a three-year high as farmers switch away from other crops, likely boosting cotton production and exports.

Australia's banking sector reacted with fury Wednesday to a government plan to slug lenders with a hefty new levy, calling it a "naive" tax grab that sent the wrong signal to global financial markets.

Growth in global bond, real estate and money market funds continues to swell the world's "shadow banking" sector, which provides

Cuba represents a "huge" but challenging opportunity for US cruise, airline and hotel companies as American visitors to the Caribbean island could increase as much as sevenfold by 2025, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group.

Toyota on Wednesday reported its first drop in annual net profit for five years, while the Japanese car giant unexpectedly warned that the cost of customer incentives and a further pickup in the yen threatened to dig further into its bottom line.

Britain needs to strike post-Brexit trade deals with countries such as Turkey and South Africa as well as the European Union, Ford said on Wednesday, underlining the scale of the challenge facing Prime Minister Theresa May to meet business demands.

The pullback in China's imports in April of crude oil and major bulk commodities, except coal, is more of a reminder that strong gains can't last forever than a warning that demand is waning in the world's biggest importer of natural resources.

Mahindra & Mahindra has stopped selling its electric car in the United Kingdom due to meagre sales and is winding up operations there, according to a document seen by Reuters, in a setback for the Indian automaker's global ambitions.

Oil prices rebounded from near 2017 lows on Wednesday after preliminary data showed a much larger-than-expected fall in US crude stocks, reviving bullish sentiment about easing oversupply.

China is expected this week to conduct the maiden test flight of a home-grown passenger jet built to meet soaring domestic travel demand and challenge the dominance of Boeing and Airbus.

European Union countries agreed on Wednesday new rules to combat dumping, a move that targets cheap imports of products such as steel from Chinese manufacturers.