VENTURE CAPITAL POST

U.S. business investment spending plans fell for a seventh straight month in March, weighed down by a strong dollar and lower energy prices, suggesting the economy was struggling to rebound from a recent soft patch.

Foreign automakers continue to plough money into factories in China, the world's largest car market, even as the biggest economic slowdown in a quarter of a century crimps sales growth.

The German government is on the verge of raising its growth forecasts for this year and next, but its new projections will be more conservative than those published by leading economic institutes earlier this week, two government sources told Reuters.

China's slowing growth is not good for anybody but it will not affect U.S. efforts to build business ties, U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said on Wednesday after Beijing announced its weakest quarter of growth in six years.

China grew at its slowest pace in six years at the start of 2015 and weakness in key sectors suggested the world's second-largest economy was still losing momentum, intensifying Beijing's struggle to find the right policy mix to shore up activity.

China's annual economic growth likely slowed to a six-year low of 7 percent in the first quarter as demand at home and abroad faltered, fanning expectations that authorities will have to roll out more policy stimulus to avert a sharper slowdown.

Retail sales rose in March for the first time since November as consumers stepped up purchases of automobiles and other goods, suggesting a sharp slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter was temporary.

Crude oil rose on Tuesday after a forecast that U.S. shale oil output would record its first monthly decline in more than four years and on tension in Yemen, where top oil exporter Saudi Arabia is embroiled in a civil war.

Germany's BDI industry association is more optimistic about the prospects for Europe's biggest economy than it was three months ago due to cheap oil, strong private consumption and a weak euro, its president said on Sunday.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Friday he will consider new measures to stimulate growth in the coming weeks after his government passed its three-year financial and economic planning document (DEF).

When it opened in 1963, Ghana's oil refinery symbolized pride and hope for the first African country to escape colonial rule. Now the plant stands idle in a sign of the economic shadow that has crept over one of the continent's brightest stars.

China's economy probably cooled further to grow 7 percent in the first three months of the year, a Reuters poll showed, which would be the weakest pace in six years and raise pressure on policymakers to do more to bolster growth.

Russia faces a protracted recession as the impact of Western sanctions lingers and oil prices stay low, the World Bank said in a report published on Wednesday.

The Federal Reserve will have a "strong" case to hike U.S. interest rates in June, a hawkish Fed official said on Tuesday, dismissing recently weak economic data as transitory and perhaps due to unseasonable weather.

A forecast model from the Federal Reserve of Atlanta on Wednesday suggested the U.S. economy is barely growing in the first quarter following an unexpectedly steep 1.4 percent drop in durable goods orders in February.