Indian engineers are toiling in the Himalayas to build the world's highest railway bridge which is expected to be 35 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower when completed by 2016.

The arch-shaped steel structure is being constructed over the Chenab River to link sections of the spectacular mountainous region of India's northern Jammu and Kashmir state.

Investors shifted out of the euro Friday and into the safety of the dollar and yen as a crisis at Portugal's largest listed bank revived fears about European debt.

The euro fetched $1.3600 in Tokyo morning trade Friday, slightly down from $1.3609 late in New York and well down from 1.3640 earlier Thursday

Aviation giant Boeing on Thursday raised its forecast for aircraft demand, saying it now expects to deliver 36,770 planes over the next two decades in deals worth $5.2 trillion (3.8 trillion euros).

Boeing's latest forecast is up 4.2 percent from last year's, with about a third of the total demand expected to come from the Asia-Pacific region.

The U.S. and China discussed trade and business concerns Thursday -- with currencies and property rights among the thorny issues on the agenda -- as the world's two biggest economies held wide-ranging annual talks.

"China and the United represent the greatest economic alliance trading partnership in the history of humankind and it is only going to grow," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a meeting of bosses from top Chinese and American companies.

Singapore's central bank said Thursday it would stop issuing Sg$10,000 ($8,000) notes to help deter money laundering, with critics complaining the note is the bill of choice for bribe-payers in neighboring Indonesia. 

A spokeswoman for the Monetary Authority of Singapore said the decision was "a pre-emptive move to mitigate the higher money laundering risks associated with large value cash transactions".

IBM announced plans Wednesday to pump $3 billion into an overhaul of computer chip technology to better meet modern demands of "Big Data" and computing pushed to the Internet "cloud."

The New York-based technology veteran hopes to leave behind the silicon long used in computer chips for a material that could ramp up power while shrinking processors to molecular levels.

Dubai's Nakheel real estate giant, hit badly during the global debt crisis, said Wednesday its profits surged 54 percent in the first half of 2014 to reach $502.7 million.

The government-owned entity, which built Dubai's palm-shaped island and a cluster of isles in the form of a world map, said its net profits hit 1.85 billion dirham ($502.7 million), compared to 1.2 billion dirham in the first six months of 2013.

Dubai's Emirates Airline has finalized an order for 150 Boeing 777 planes valued at $56 billion at list prices, the US manufacturer said Wednesday in Dubai.

The planes, comprising 115 777-9Xs and 35 777-8Xs, were initially ordered during the Dubai Airshow in November 2013, when the largest operator of the long haul airliner took also purchase rights for 50 additional planes.

The BRICS group of emerging giants are expected to sign a deal next week to open their own development bank by 2016, Russia's finance minister said Wednesday.

The entity would be called "New Development Bank", with each BRICS member to contribute $2 billion to its capital, Anton Siluanov said, according to Russian news agencies.

Joana Miranda is barely able to scrape a living working as a nurse in Lisbon, where she earns five euros ($7) an hour picking up odd jobs in retirement homes.

Now she is joining the growing queue of educated young Portuguese -- equivalent to one every five minutes -- who are leaving in search of a brighter future in another country.