The Quandt family, shareholders of carmaker BMW, have overtaken the founders of discount supermarket chains Aldi and Lidl as Germany's wealthiest family, weekly Manager Magazin said on Tuesday.

The Philippines has pushed back its 2013 target to attain self-sufficiency in rice production by another two years, an official said Tuesday, adding that the country will likely have to import hundreds of thousands of tonnes next year.

Global air cargo traffic will double in the next 20 years, enjoying annual growth of 4.7 percent as international trade picks up after a long period of stagnation, U.S. aerospace giant Boeing predicted Tuesday. 

Major airline operators were severely hit by the global financial crisis in 2008 and, despite a rebound in 2010, worldwide air cargo traffic has remained flat in recent years.

Workers on London's Underground train system will stage a 48 hour strike next Tuesday, the transport union said, risking travel chaos in a long-running dispute over ticket offices closures.

European Union anti-trust regulators are to challenge Luxembourg over its tax deals with Internet shopping giant Amazon that Brussels believes amount to illegal state aid, a report said on Tuesday.

Russia has long had a problem with capital flight, but this time entrepreneurs are also fleeing given that President Vladimir Putin appears to be turning the screws as the dispute with the West over Ukraine drags on.

Russia's ruble plunged on Monday, reaching an all-time low of more than 40 rubles to the dollar.

The ruble slumped to 40.05 to the dollar shortly after Moscow markets opened, the first time the Russian national currency weakened beyond the psychologically important rate of 40 to the dollar.

Euro Disney, which runs Disneyland Paris, one of Europe's top tourist attractions, announced Monday it was receiving a billion-euro refinancing package to overcome a crisis after a drastic fall in visitor numbers.

The news sent shares in the company plummeting by as much as 21 percent on the Paris stock market, which was marginally in positive territory overall.

In his high-rise office in Beirut, Sandro Saade carefully chews a merlot grape from a vineyard hundreds of miles away in war-ravaged Syria, trying to determine if it is ripe enough to order the start of the harvest.

It's too dangerous for him to travel to the vineyards of Domaine de Bargylus, which is nestled in verdant hills where wine has been produced since ancient times. But despite the bloody conflict and the threat of Islamic extremists, he is determined to produce world-class wines, and to help preserve a Levantine cosmopolitanism imperiled by decades of war.

British property prices will fall in 2015 following a steep rise over this year, according to a leading forecaster the Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).

Researchers predict prices to fall 0.8 percent year-on-year in 2015, as the Bank of England is widely expected to raise interest rates from a historic low base level of 0.5 percent.