New York's financial regulator is investigating insurer Lloyds of London for suspected violations of U.S. sanctions forbidding dealings with Iran, a source told Agence France Presse Wednesday.

The state's Department of Financial Services is seeking information on Lloyds' own internal probe into whether it issued insurance contracts for companies trading commodities with Iran.

Lending to businesses in the debt-mired eurozone contracted sharply in July, data published by the European Central Bank showed on Wednesday, a potential source of concern for economic recovery.

Private sector loans dropped by 1.9 percent in July in a year-on-year comparison, the ECB said, after already contracting by 1.6 percent in June.

Oil prices soared in Asia on Wednesday as Western powers prepared for possible military action against Syria over the regime's alleged use of chemical weapons.

Analysts say a military strike targeting President Bashar al-Assad's regime could further ratchet up tensions in the oil-producing Middle East, already wracked by the festering political crisis in Egypt.

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.