Japan and Iran will start talks next week to negotiate a bilateral investment treaty, as Washington moves to ease sanctions against Tehran and Tokyo looks to step up its interests in the resource rich nation.

Japanese and Iranian officials will meet in Tehran from Monday through to Wednesday to secure a deal, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Friday, as other energy consumers also rush to explore Tehran's commercial potential.

American financial service company Standard & Poor's issued war-torn Iraq a credit rating for the first time Thursday, with the country's conflict with Islamic State militants and low oil prices giving it a junk score.

Iraq has been plagued by war and violence since the 2003 U.S invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Currently violent jihadists have taken over large parts of the country, something Standard & Poor's took into account when it handed out its B- rating.

German chemicals giant BASF said Friday it has agreed with Russian gas behemoth Gazprom to go ahead with an asset swap which the two had abandoned due to tensions between Russia and the West. 

"Due to the difficult political environment, BASF and Gazprom had decided not to complete the asset swap planned for the end of the 2014," the German group explained in a statement.

Brazil's government denied rumors Thursday that the country's finance minister was about to step down, which come as the world's seventh-biggest economy struggles with a steep slowdown.

President Dilma Rousseff's chief of staff shot down the rumors after local press reports suggested Finance Minister Joaquim Levy could quit due to a lack of support.

Oil prices edged lower in cautious Asian  trade Friday as investors await the release of a U.S. jobs report for August that could determine the Federal Reserve's timetable for hiking interest rates. 

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate for October delivery fell 17 cents to $46.58 while Brent crude for October eased 16 cents to $50.52 in late-morning trade.

Indonesia has unexpectedly dumped much-vaunted plans for its first high-speed railway in favour of a slower and cheaper rail option, in a blow to Japan and China who have been fiercely competing to win the construction job.

President Joko Widodo was expected to announce the winning bid for the multi-billion dollar infrastructure project this week, but instead his chief economics minister, Darmin Nasution, told the Japanese ambassador Friday that the hotly-contested project had been shelved. 

More than 1,000 tractors rolled into Paris on Thursday as farmers attempted to clog up the capital's roads in protest at their plummeting incomes.

Tractors were lined up at the busy Nation roundabout in the east of the city, but Parisians heeded calls to avoid using their cars and traffic was less congested than normal during the morning rush hour.

Swiss authorities said Thursday they had frozen tens of millions of dollars in assets as part of an investigation into Malaysia's troubled state investment fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). 

The Swiss attorney general's office further confirmed that criminal proceedings had been opened against two executives of the fund, which has been at the centre of mounting anger over Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's tenure. 

After presenting Brazil's first ever budget deficit, President Dilma Rousseff promised Wednesday that her government will work hard to get back in the black.

"We are being straightforward. And we are showing, clearly, that there is a problem," she said at a news briefing.

The European Central Bank may have to consider fresh policy measures to prevent deflation in the single currency area, but will not move at its meeting Thursday, analysts said. 

"After all the Greek excitement over the summer, the ECB had probably been hoping for a very ordinary and dull meeting this week; to slowly move from vacation into business mode," said ING DiBa economist Carsten Brzeski.