An explosion targeting a pipeline in eastern Turkey has cut off Iranian natural gas shipments to the country, Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday citing sources from the energy ministry.

The blast occurred at 2300 GMT Wednesday in an area between villages of Hidirli and Kalender in the eastern province of Agri, said Anatolia.

Middle East Airlines (MEA) has formally joined the global airline alliance SkyTeam, becoming its 17th member and second anchor in the fast growing Middle East region.

MEA is the second airline in the MENA region to join SkyTeam in addition to Saudi Arabian Airlines that has joined at the end of May-2012, thus expanding SkyTeam in the region.

Lebanon’s former economy minister Nasser Saidi has resigned as Dubai International Financial Center’s chief economist, Saidi confirmed Thursday on the social media networking Twitter.

Saidi had been Chief Economist at the DIFC since April 2006 and, more recently appointed, Head of External Relations too. He was also Executive Director of the Hawkamah-Institute for Corporate Governance at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and a prime mover in the institute’s establishment.

Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco on Wednesday announced plans to merge its company Vela with Saudi firm Bahri to form the world's fourth largest oil transporter.

Under a non-binding memorandum of understanding, Bahri would pay Vela $1.3 billion, made up of $832,000 in cash and the rest in stocks.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will ask EU peers Thursday to "respond to sacrifices" by recession-hit Greeks seeking to amend the terms of a second EU-IMF bailout, a report said.

The top-selling daily Ta Nea said that Samaras, who is recovering from eye surgery and will miss an EU summit in Brussels, made the call in a letter to be delivered by President Carolos Papoulias, who will represent Greece.

Europe's main stock markets nudged higher at the start of trading on Thursday with traders waiting to see if an EU summit will deliver concrete steps to tackle the Eurozone’s spreading debt crisis.

London's benchmark FTSE 100 index rose 0.03 percent to 5,525.71 points, Frankfurt's DAX 30 won 0.05 percent to 6,232.12 points and in Paris the CAC 40 gained 0.11 percent to 3,066.55.

Turkey will sign Tuesday a deal with neighboring Azerbaijan on building the $7 billion Trans-Anatolian natural gas pipeline (TANAP) to carry Azeri gas to European markets, its prime minister said.

This project is about transferring the natural gas extracted from the second phase of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field to Europe, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a parliamentary address.

Business executives around the world have become much more gloomy about the global economy as the Eurozone crisis pounds on, according to a new survey released Tuesday by McKinsey & Co.

Around one-half of 1,349 executives surveyed in early June said they expect the economy to worsen through the rest of the year, while only 20 percent see things getting better.

Crude prices were mixed in Asian trade Wednesday as investors grappled with the escalating debt crisis in the Eurozone ahead of a key European Union summit.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for August, was up 13 cents at $79.49 a barrel in morning trade as the contract stayed below the psychologically important $80.00 threshold.

Boeing on Tuesday named Raymond Connor as the new head of its commercial airplanes business, succeeding Jim Albaugh, who is retiring after 37 years of service at the U.S. aerospace giant.

Conner, 57, was appointed president and chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, effective immediately, Boeing said in a statement.