Qatar Airways has renegotiated an order with Airbus to take delivery only of larger A321 planes, not A320s as originally planned, the Gulf carrier's chief executive said on Thursday.

Ukraine's prime minister said Thursday the local currency would gain around 30 percent of its value should the ex-Soviet country become energy self-sufficient as the government plans by 2020.

Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest bank, has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a tax fraud case brought by the U.S. Justice Department, the federal prosecutor in charge has announced.

Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Deutsche Bank used a "web of shell companies and calculated transactions" to try to evade paying tens of millions of dollars in taxes.

Beatrice, a busy 50-year-old manager at an airline in Paris, sounds like she would benefit from France's new "right to disconnect" law that guarantees all employees freedom from their work smartphone and email. 

"It often happens that I'm interrupted by urgent problems in my free time, or need to reply to emails out of hours," she told AFP, asking for her real name and her company's not to be used.

Iraq has cut crude production by some 200,000 barrels per day as part of an OPEC oil cartel agreement aimed at boosting flagging prices, the oil ministry's spokesman said Thursday.

Natural disasters including storms and earthquakes caused $175 billion of damage in 2016, German reinsurance giant Munich Re said Wednesday, the highest level since 2012.

Eurozone business activity hit its highest rate since May 2011 in December but the outlook remains hostage to political developments, a closely watched survey showed Wednesday.

As tech industry leaders gather for an annual extravaganza showcasing hot new products, political uncertainty is casting a cloud over the sector.

The election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum are among the factors weighing on the outlook. And a strong U.S. dollar may cut into spending for many consumers around the world.

Morocco has become the latest Muslim-majority country to authorize Islamic banks, amid growing market demand for Sharia-compliant banking.

The Moroccan central bank announced this week it has approved five Islamic banks, fulfilling a long-standing promise of the Islamist party leading a coalition government since 2011.

Hit by a severe crisis several years ago, Spain's banking sector has recovered but at a cost as thousands are laid off and it struggles to get rid of toxic assets.

"The system is closer to putting most of the crisis legacies behind it," analysts at the International Monetary Fund in charge of Spain said in a recent report.