Global food prices rose by 1.4 percent in September after holding steady for two months as cereals, meat and dairy prices climbed, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization said Thursday.

The FAO's Food Price Index, a monthly measure of changes in a basket of food commodities, edged up three points to 216 points in September.

Oil prices rose slightly Thursday after positive U.S. economic reports offset some of the pessimism about global growth prospects.

Benchmark oil for November delivery was up 16 cents to $88.30 per barrel at midday Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Wednesday, oil fell $3.75, or 4.1 percent, to $88.14 per barrel in New York. That was the biggest decline since May 4.

Britain will donate 1 million pounds (1.25 million euros) to help 10,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey cope with the upcoming winter, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Wednesday.

"It's clear that the scale of the challenge is huge, however, with over 93,000 registered refugees in the camps along the Syrian-Turkish border and more crossing every day," said the British deputy prime minister, according to a statement from his office.

Dubai's property sector, which went into free fall when the global financial crisis hit, looks like it might be on a path to recovery, with prices starting to bottom out and a few developers daring to roll out new projects.

At the annual Cityscape Global show, which served over years of property frenzy as a launchpad for grandiose projects, a handful of developers displayed scale models for seaside and desert developments to test the appetite of the market.

Iranian police on Wednesday cracked down on illegal money changers in Tehran, witnesses said, in an apparent bid to halt a dramatic plunge in the value of Iran's currency this week.

Unlicensed vendors who usually walk the streets in the capital's central Ferdowsi area buying and selling small amounts of dollars were rounded up and arrested, witnesses said.

Oil prices fell for a second day Wednesday over concerns about economic turbulence in Europe, China and the U.S.

Benchmark oil was down 23 cents to $91.66 per barrel at midday Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract dropped 59 cents to end at $91.89 per barrel in New York on Tuesday.

A Japanese Finance Ministry official says Tokyo is hoping the recent flare-up in friction with China will not damage the two Asian economic powers' cooperation in international finance.

Takehiko Nakao, a vice minister for finance, said reports Wednesday that representatives of some big Chinese banks were canceling plans to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Tokyo next week was "very disappointing."

The British government has scrapped a controversial decision to strip Richard Branson's Virgin Group of a major rail franchise, citing significant flaws in the way the decision was made.

The government announced in August that it was awarding a 13-year franchise to run the west coast London-to-Scotland service to Virgin's rival FirstGroup.

Taiwan's debt-ridden memory chip maker ProMOS Technologies plans to lay off 1,360 employees, or 80 percent of its total workforce, officials said Wednesday.

The decision is part of a court-approved restructuring plan forced on the company by its creditors, according to the Central Taiwan Science Park, where some of the company's facilities are located.

Surprise good news from the U.S. continued to shore up financial markets Tuesday despite concerns about the economic outlook of both Greece and Spain.

In what will be a busy week for U.S. economic data, investors are assessing whether the world's largest economy may be getting over its recent soft patch.