Factory activity in Europe and Asia cooled in August after a strong July, as new orders dwindled in the face of escalating tensions in Ukraine and a patchy recovery in China, purchasing managers indexes showed.

European Union antitrust regulators will decide by Oct. 3 whether to clear world No. 1 online social network Facebook's $19 billion offer for mobile messaging startup WhatsApp, the European Commission said on Monday.

When Charlie Crist last governed Florida, his green energy and climate policies made him few friends among the state's powerful electricity corporations.

Apple Inc plans to enable its next iPhone to become a mobile wallet by allowing owners to securely make mobile payments in a store with the touch of a finger, Bloomberg said on Sunday, citing a person familiar with the situation.

Dutch brewer Heineken (HEIN.AS) has agreed to sell its Mexican packaging business Empaque to Crown (CCK.N) for $1.23 billion including debt, shedding a non-core business it acquired when entering the Mexican market in 2010.

Swatch Group is happy to go it alone with a launch next year of watches with "smart" features to compete with so-called wearable gadgets from the big tech companies, a market potentially worth $93 billion.

French media company Vivendi (VIV.PA) picked Telefonica (TEF.MC) for exclusive talks over the sale of its Brazilian broadband unit GVT, spurning a rival bid from Telecom Italia (TLIT.MI).

Real estate owner Store Capital Corp, backed by private equity firm Oaktree Capital Management LLC, filed with U.S. regulators on Friday for an initial public offering of common stock.

India has decided to acquire Boeing's Chinook and Apache helicopters, an Indian defense ministry official said on Saturday, in a deal valued at $2.5 billion that could ease strained ties between New Delhi and Washington.

Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is planning to launch its New York stock market debut in the week of Sept. 8, a person briefed on the matter told Reuters on Saturday.