Lafarge (LAFP.PA) and Holcim (HOLN.VX) are about to request approval from the European Commission for their planned merger, Lafarge Chief Executive Bruno Lafont told reporters on Thursday.

The chance of a hard landing for China's economy is very small in spite of worries about the country's real-estate sector, the chief economist of the People's Bank of China said on Saturday.

South Africa has signed a nuclear power agreement with France, the government said on Friday, three weeks after it reached a similar deal with Russia as part of Pretoria's first tentative steps towards building up to 9,600 MW of nuclear power.

When a guesthouse belonging to one of Nigeria's leading Christian pastors collapsed last month, killing 115 mostly South African pilgrims, attention focused on the multimillion-dollar "megachurches" that form a huge, untaxed sector of Africa's top economy.

A sculpture of a goddess riding a chariot and a limestone bust of a woman's head upon which the sculptor Modigliani used to light candles are the centerpieces of an eye-popping 500 million pounds ($800 million) of art put on show at Sotheby's on Friday.

Air France-KLM is pressing ahead with expansion of its low cost brand in France and has a back-up plan if a deadlock with pilots continues, its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Alexandre de Juniac said in an interview published on Sunday.

The $700 trillion financial derivatives industry has agreed to a fundamental rule change from January to help regulators to wind down failed banks without destabilising markets.

The hunt for dividend yield is pushing U.S. fund managers into an unproven new offshoot of the alternative energy industry. Yield companies - commonly called "yieldcos" - are spinoffs of alternative energy companies that own assets such as wind or solar farms and pay investors dividends out of the cash flow generated by long-term contracts to sell power to utility companies.

Federal Reserve officials on Saturday took stock of a slowdown in the global economy and said it could delay an increase in U.S. interest rates if serious enough.

The International Monetary Fund's member countries on Saturday said bold action was needed to bolster the global economic recovery and they urged governments not to squelch growth by tightening budgets too drastically, although Germany poured cold water on the idea of a new global "crisis."