The Saudi labor minister vowed Tuesday to ensure the Binladin Group keeps a promise to resolve wage issues, amid reports of thousands at the building firm facing unpaid salaries and layoffs.

Labor Minister Mufarrej al-Haqbani's comments followed a Saudi newspaper report on Monday that Binladin Group, one of the world's largest construction companies, was laying off 77,000 foreign workers.

HSBC on Tuesday said its net profit fell almost a fifth in the first quarter, with Europe's biggest bank hit by "extreme levels" of markets volatility, while bad loans doubled.

Equity and currency markets from Asia to the Americas were sent into meltdown at the start of the year as a growth slowdown in China and plunging oil prices fanned concerns about the world economy.

Iran and South Korea have decided to triple their annual trade volume to $18 billion, President Hassan Rouhani announced on Monday after meeting his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-Hye.

Australian banking heavyweight Westpac posted a three percent rise in interim net profit Monday as it battles regulatory changes and rising bad loans, disappointing investors who savaged the share price.

Do Colombia's FARC guerrillas have a multi-billion-dollar fortune from kidnapping and drug trafficking stashed in foreign bank accounts?

That question has triggered an explosive debate in Colombia just as it tries to turn the page on the half-century conflict between the government and the Marxist rebel group.

Oil prices dipped Monday after enjoying another strong rally last week, with news of a jump in Iraqi exports bringing supply glut fears back to the fore.

The commodity has surged for four weeks thanks to a weaker dollar, small indications that the global economy -- particularly China -- is showing signs of a mild recovery and various disruptions to output including a strike in Kuwait.

Japan's finance minister said late Saturday the recent sharp rise in the yen is "extremely worrying", adding Tokyo will take action when necessary.

The remarks, which suggest Tokyo's possible market intervention, came after the Japanese unit surged to an 18-month high against the dollar in New York Friday.

While petro-states reel from plunging oil prices and gas producers brace for American exports to hit the market, two west African nations are forging ahead with potentially massive extraction projects others might fear to touch.

Energy firms say Senegal and Mauritania's current oil and gas ventures will transform them into net exporters by 2020, betting on long-term demand and the eventual recovery of the slumped market, as well as their proximity to Europe.

A year into a political crisis which has claimed about 500 lives, driven a quarter of a million into exile and prompted Western donors to suspend government aid, Burundi's economy is on the ropes.

The central African country had only just begun to recover from a 1993-2006 ethnic-based civil war when it became sucked back into violence after President Pierre Nkurunziza announced a year ago that he would seek a third term in office.

Sales are falling off a cliff. Its reputation is in tatters. And even its top executive is talking about whether the automaker will survive.

Mitsubishi Motors' future is hanging in the balance for the second time in a decade after a bombshell admission that it has been cheating on fuel-economy tests for years.