Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi played down concern over Africa's debts with Beijing on Thursday as he arrived in Ethiopia at the start of a four-nation Africa tour.

Iran's intelligence ministry said Monday it had arrested 11 "economic disruptors" who misappropriated some $400 million earmarked for essential goods and smuggled the money out of the country.

Former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn will be spending the beginning of 2019 behind bars after a Tokyo court on Monday extended his detention through to January 11.

China's top court will rule on intellectual property cases for the first time from January 1, the government said, elevating the handling of an issue that has become a key complaint in the trade war with the U.S.

Moscow's metro system is famed for its Stalin-era stations with glittering chandeliers and mosaics, but architects are taking a radical new approach as the network undergoes a massive expansion.

Leather riding boots are neatly lined up on a carpet, a picture shows blood-thirsty hounds on a fox hunt and a fountain spews water from the mouths of stone horses.

Concrete skeletons still haunt Spain, 10 years after the 2008 global economic crisis caused a housing boom to crumble, bankrupting developers and dotting the landscape with unfinished projects.

The paralysis triggered by the US government shutdown could have unexpected consequences, such as muddying economic statistics just as the markets are extremely reactive to any whiff of uncertainty.

The euro was launched on January 1, 1999, at first only for accounting and financial transactions, and then three years later as notes and coins.

The United Nations on Friday welcomed a decision by Yemen's government to pay the salaries of civil servants in the rebel-held city of Hodeida starting this month.