China's leaders will gather in November for a key meeting on economic reforms, state media said Wednesday, the third time they will have met since a generational handover of power last year.

The Third Plenum of the ruling Communist Party's 200-member Central Committee could focus on reforming finance and taxation among other areas, the state-run Global Times newspaper said.

The Gulf sultanate of Oman is in talks to buy Iranian gas in a 25-year deal worth around $60 billion, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said Tuesday.

Zanganeh said Iran and Oman had "signed a memorandum of understanding for the construction of a gas pipeline" under the Sea of Oman, on the east of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Half a dozen new five-star hotels, flagship stores for Louis Vuitton, Prada and Emporio Armani: Vienna is undergoing a luxury facelift that is delighting Arab, Asian and Russian tourists, as well as locals.

Always the epitome of elegance and culture, the Austrian capital was long set on tradition.

Less than a month before German elections, the eurozone crisis has entered the campaign battle, giving the opposition badly needed ammunition for an attack against popular Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"This naturally spells a certain risk for the conservative Merkel, because so far the Germans have felt their savings were secure" despite the crisis, said Lothar Probst, a political scientist at Bremen University.

Asian markets were mostly lower Tuesday, tracking losses in Wall Street amid fears of U.S. military intervention in Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Syria it would face action over the "moral obscenity" of a chemical weapons attack, as expectations grow that Washington and its allies are preparing to launch a punitive missile strike.

Instability in Italy over Silvio Berlusconi's future could trigger early elections next year and punish the country on the financial markets starting this week, a top U.S. economist warned on Monday.

Nouriel Roubini, who teaches at New York University, said in an interview with La Repubblica daily that Italy, the eurozone's third-biggest economy, was currently in a period of "controlled volatility".

China's government tried Monday to reassure companies and its public about the economy's health, saying growth is stabilizing after a lengthy decline and should hit the official target of 7.5 percent for the year.

The announcement by the chief spokesman for the Cabinet's statistics agency was part of official efforts to defuse unease about the country's deepest slump since the 2008 global crisis.

Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum said it had agreed to sell a 10-percent stake in a natural gas field off the coast of Mozambique for $2.64 billion cash to an Indian corporation.

Anadarko said in a statement late Sunday that it had entered an agreement with ONGC Videsh, a subsidiary of Indian multinational Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, to sell part of its stake in Mozambique's Offshore Area 1.

Iraq's oil ministry, struggling with sputtering output, has blamed Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell over $4.6 billion in lost revenue due to production delays, in a letter seen by Agence France Presse Monday.

The document, dated July 21, 2013, sharply criticizes the foreign energy firm for shortfalls in oil extraction at the giant Majnoon field in south Iraq, and comes as oil exports have fallen to their lowest level in 16 months even as Baghdad has looked to cement its role as a key global energy producer.

Sultan Qaboos of Oman, the only Gulf leader to maintain good relations with Tehran, arrived in Iran Sunday for a visit focused on economic and diplomatic issues, Iranian authorities said.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi said "the main focus of the negotiations is boosting energy and economic cooperation."