Procter & Gamble Co. says its fiscal fourth-quarter net income dropped due to a write down related to its Braun Appliance business and other one-time costs but adjusted results beat expectations.

Its shares edged up 1 percent in premarket trading.

As a slew of big-name Japanese companies report improved quarterly earnings, one theme is taking the sheen off their rosy numbers: mainstay businesses are still struggling despite the perk from a weaker yen.

The latest example came Thursday from Sony Corp. The Japanese electronics and entertainment company reported a 3.5 billion yen ($35 million) April-June profit, a reversal from the 24.6 billion yen loss it suffered the previous year.

Japan resumed imports of some U.S. wheat Thursday, ending a two-month suspension that came after genetically engineered crops were found on an Oregon farm.

The agriculture ministry purchased 89,579 tons of Western White on Thursday, an official with the ministry's trade division said.

A Qatar Airways Boeing 787 Dreamliner resumed flights on Wednesday after being grounded for several days because "technical components required replacement," the company said.

"The aircraft flew today 31st July 2013 to (the start point of) one of Qatar Airways' four Boeing 787 operated routes," it said in a statement.

Romania, the IMF and the EU have reached agreement on a new, two-year deal that will give the Balkan country access to a 4.0-billion-euro credit line, an IMF official said on Wednesday.

"The authorities intend to treat the arrangement as precautionary and will not draw" any money, Andrea Schaechter, head of an IMF mission to Romania, told a press conference.

Further evidence has emerged that the eurozone economy is on the mend.

Figures Wednesday from Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, show that the number of unemployed across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro fell in June to 19.27 million from the previous month's 19.29 million. That's the first fall since April 2011.

The statutes of the new development bank planned by the BRICS group of five emerging powers could be ready next year, Brazil's foreign minister said here Tuesday.

"We made good progress during the last meeting in Durban and the expectation is that in the 2014 meeting in Brazil, enough progress has been made to conclude the statutes of the bank," Antonio Patriota told reporters.

Mexico's enormous and worsening poverty figures underscore that authorities have not made fighting it a top priority, Amnesty International charged Tuesday.

The government this week reported that the number of Mexicans living in poverty rose from 52.8 million in 2010 to 53.3 million in 2012 -- representing almost half the population of 112 million.

Spain's recession eased in the second quarter, official data showed on Tuesday, raising hopes the eurozone's fourth largest economy may finally be on the road to recovery.

Gross domestic product shrank by 0.1 percent in the three months ending June as booming exports helped to offset weak domestic demand, compared to a 0.5 percent contraction in the first quarter, data from the national statistics institute showed.

Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest bank, said on Tuesday its net profits were halved in the second quarter, as it made massive provisions to meet litigation costs.

The bank's net profits fell to 335 million euros ($444 million) for the three months ending June, down from 666 million in the second quarter last year.