Banking giant HSBC on Monday reported a massive jump in third-quarter earnings, as business booms in Asia and a huge restructuring drive bears fruit.

Cyprus will know by the end of 2018 if it has exploitable offshore gas reserves after several more test drills are carried out, the island's Energy Minister George Lakkotrypis said Monday.

Major Japanese bank Mizuho Financial Group is considering slashing its global workforce by about one-third over a decade, reports said, as it looks to replace clerical jobs with artificial intelligence and other technology.

The lender is looking at chopping 19,000 jobs from its current roster of around 60,000 employees in Japan and overseas by March 2027, the top-selling Yomiuri newspaper said Sunday.

The tiled palaces beside Pakistan's Mangla reservoir and dozens of exchange offices testify to the prosperity enjoyed by Kashmir's Mirpur thanks to vast sums of cash sent back by tens of thousands of emigrants living in Britain.

Chinese billionaires are boasting about their Marxist bonafides. The Communist Party is tightening its grip on state-owned companies. And foreign companies are being asked to invite party cells into their offices. 

From a holographic lion to talking robots and flying taxis, Saudi Arabia has dazzled investors with plans for hi-tech "giga projects" -- but skeptics question their viability in an era of cheap oil.

The kingdom has revealed plans to build NEOM, a mega project billed as a regional Silicon Valley, in addition to an entertainment city in Riyadh that would rival Walt Disney and the Red Sea project, a reef-fringed resort destination.

Kuwaiti telecoms giant Zain on Sunday reported a drop in its third quarter net profits due to currency exchange losses in Sudan and conflict in Iraq.

The world's largest economy continued to expand at a robust pace in third quarter despite being battered by multiple hurricanes, the US Commerce Department reported Friday.

Hitting President Donald Trump's growth target for the second quarter in a row, U.S. GDP grew at three percent for the July-September period, official figures showed.

Shares in Catalan banks fell sharply on Friday, dragging the entire stock market with them, after Catalonia's regional parliament declared independence.

Britain's bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland bounced back into the black in the third quarter on lower litigation and restructuring costs, it said Friday.