The number of child labourers aged 14 or below in India dropped to 4.5 million in 2011 from 12.6 million a decade before, said the country's labour minister, urging lawmakers to approve planned changes to existing legislation to curb the problem.

Indian authorities have sent Cairn Energy a tax bill for $4.4 billion, the company said Tuesday, the latest chapter in a long-running row that has stoked foreign firms' fears of retrospective tax demands.

British finance minister George Osborne warned Sunday of further spending cuts to come in the government budget.

Wanted: six full-time ninjas who have a way with words and can do backward handsprings. Pay: about $1,600 a month.

India's market regulator Saturday announced a clampdown on "wilful defaulters" as the government tackles mounting bad bank loans, days after tycoon Vijay Mallya left the country owing more than $1 billion.

With a huge global steel glut and slowing demand in China, an enormous recent spike in the price of iron ore has left analysts scratching their heads, with some even claiming a flower show might be to blame.

Burkhard Scholz, the manager of a four-star hotel on the wooded shore of a lake near Berlin, had 10 trainee jobs up for grabs last year. But he only found two people to fill them, one of whom was an asylum seeker from Afghanistan.

A year ago, Micromax vaulted past Samsung Electronics Co Ltd to become India's leading smartphone brand. Today, its market share has nearly halved, several top executives have resigned, and the company is looking for growth outside India.

Bangladesh is going to be the part of a joint initiative to establish a regional body in South Asia to enhance skills and capacity development of public sector officials and bankers.

France's central bank lowered its first-quarter growth prediction on Wednesday to 0.3 percent from 0.4 percent after several sectors reported a sudden slowdown.

The slump in Chinese growth and its nascent economic transition was the key factor in a sharp slowdown last year in global trade, the World Bank said Wednesday.

Toshiba Corp has granted Canon Inc exclusive negotiating rights for its medical equipment unit after a hotly contested auction, with a report putting Canon's offer at more than $6 billion.

German top-of-the-range carmaker BMW said Wednesday it clocked up record sales and profits in 2015 and would celebrate its centenary this year by increasing its dividend payout to shareholders.

Sri Lanka's government Tuesday announced a slew of emergency tax increases to help combat a debt crisis that has forced it to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that the global economy faces a growing "risk of economic derailment."

FRANCE faced a wave of protests Wednesday against deeply unpopular labour reforms that have divided an already-fractured Socialist government and raised hackles in a country accustomed to iron-clad job security.

SAUDI Arabia is seeking a bank loan of between $6 billion and $8 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, in what would be the first significant foreign borrowing by the kingdom's government for over a decade.

SAUDI Arabia's plans for economic reform foresee winding down 'jobs for life' in an inefficient state bureaucracy and replacing them with new careers in a dynamic private sector.

Tech giant Samsung Electronics on Wednesday said it will launch a phone upgrade programme in South Korea this week that will allow subscribers to switch to a new premium handset every 12 months.

Spanish global clothing giant Inditex, owner of the Zara brand, reported Wednesday a sharp jump in profits in 2015 due to higher sales and its international expansion efforts.