As the greatest urbanization drive in history swells China's cities with ranks of identikit apartment blocks, one culinary businessman is indulging his architectural appetite with a visual feast of extravagant, outlandish castles.

"I don't have any hobbies, except for planting trees and building castles," said Liu Chonghua, standing on a crenelated turret atop the largest of the six he has constructed.

European finance ministers are holding difficult talks on how to shore up their banking system and prevent further financial crises.

Officials from the 28 member countries are meeting Friday to narrow their differences on how to set up a new agency at the European Union level that could restructure failing banks and prevent their troubles from bankrupting individual countries through expensive bailouts.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – 6 November 2013 – It is not the strongest businesses that survive and flourish, but the most adaptable: Mindshare, a leading media agency in the MENA region, is at the forefront of the marketing industry’s ongoing transformation. The Mindshare team is excited to share global insights, ideas and best practices at the “Art of Adaptation” summit, an event that addresses the importance of adaptability.

Taking place on November 26th at the Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai, this must-attend one-day event brings together groundbreaking speakers from around the world to provide fresh perspectives on adaptation in life and business.

Barclays bank plans to cut 1,700 jobs as it reduces the number of local branches in Britain, a spokesman said Thursday.

The spokesman confirmed a claim from the union Unite, saying the way customers accessed their money "is changing rapidly" and fewer branches were required.

The CIA is secretly amassing records of international money transfers into and out of the United States, including operations handled by firms like Western Union, the New York Times reported Friday.

The Central Intelligence Agency is acting under the same law that the NSA uses to assemble a data base of Americans' phone records, the paper said, quoting current and former U.S. officials.

Bulgaria's economy returned to growth in the third quarter despite ongoing political tensions in the EU's poorest country, official preliminary data showed on Thursday.

Helped by a modest recovery in the eurozone that has boosted other central and eastern European emerging economies, gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.6 percent after shrinking 0.1 percent in the last quarter.

Garbage is piling up on streets around the mosque housing the burial site of the Prophet Muhammad. Grocery stores have shut their doors and almost half of Saudi Arabia's small construction firms have stopped working on projects.

The mess is because foreign workers on which many businesses rely are fleeing, have gone into hiding or are under arrest amid a crackdown launched Nov. 4 targeting the kingdom's 9 million migrant laborers. Decades of lax immigration enforcement allowed migrants to take low-wage manual, clerical and service jobs that the kingdom's own citizens shunned for better paying, more comfortable work.

France's economy contracted by 0.1 percent in third quarter due to weakened exports and lagging business investment, official data showed on Thursday, dealing a further blow to unpopular Socialist President Francois Hollande.

The drop comes after the economy grew by an unexpected 0.5 percent during the second quarter, pulling the eurozone's second-largest economy out of a shallow recession.

Japan said Thursday that growth halved in the July-September quarter as exports weakened and consumer spending slowed, but economists were divided over what it meant for Tokyo's drive to fire up the economy.

The once-anaemic economy has lately been outpacing growth in other G7 nations as a policy blitz led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe helped push down the yen, giving a boost to exporters and sparking a stock market rally.

Britain's economic recovery "has finally taken hold", the Bank of England said on Wednesday as it upgraded its growth forecasts despite headwinds from the eurozone debt crisis.

The BoE added that unemployment could fall faster than expected, signalling that its key interest rate could rise from the current record-low level sooner than anticipated.