Leading Indian banks have suspended staff on government orders after a media sting operation revealed suspected money laundering at more than 20 financial institutions, reports said Wednesday.

Indian news outlet Cobrapost made the allegations on Monday based on two undercover investigations carried out by its team, leading the finance ministry to call for immediate action against any staff involved.

China swung back to trade surplus in April after posting a rare deficit the previous month, official data showed Wednesday, but analysts cautioned the better-than-expected figures may not reflect reality.

The world's second-largest economy recorded an $18.2 billion trade surplus last month, Customs said in a statement, higher than the median forecast of $15.6 billion in a poll of 12 economists by Dow Jones Newswires.

The state-owned Bank of China has shut the account of a North Korean bank the U.S. accuses of backing Pyongyang's nuclear program, Dow Jones said Tuesday, citing a statement from the Chinese entity.

"The Foreign Trade Bank of North Korea, the country's main foreign-exchange bank, has been told its account has been closed," Dow Jones reported. It would be the first openly acknowledged move by a Chinese institution against North Korean interests in the current stand-off.

A decision by the European Commission to give France two more years to meet its deficit target of three percent will not come "for free", EU President Herman Van Rompuy said on Tuesday.

"The decision is not (formally) taken, neither by the commission nor by the council," he told reporters at a press conference in Stockholm.

The European Commission will set out on Wednesday plans for universal access to current accounts with banks -- seeking to remedy an exclusion that Brussels calculates affects nearly 60 million adults across the European Union.

Legislative proposals on payment accounts also aim to make it easier to switch banks, similar to EU measures to open up utility markets in recent years.

Australia's central bank cut interest rates to a record low 2.75 percent Tuesday as investment in the Asia-driven mining sector hits its peak and the persistently high dollar squeezes local industry.

The Reserve Bank of Australia's shock decision to slash 25 basis points takes the official cash rate to never-before-seen lows, and is aimed at priming those areas struggling as the economy transforms away from mining.

South Africa's embattled state airline has borrowed about $170 million to cover operating costs amid crippling financial trouble, a spokesman said on Monday.

National carrier South African Airways (SAA) raised the 1.5 billion rand ($167 million, 128 million euro), a company spokesman told AFP.

The masses of people registered at unemployment offices in Spain shrank slightly in April to fewer than five million, raw data showed Monday, a result hailed by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government.

The number of job seekers registered as unemployed in April fell from the previous month by 46,050 people, or 0.91 percent, dipping below the five-million mark to 4.989 million, according to raw figures released in a monthly report by the Labor Ministry.

South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries said Monday it had won a $700 million deal to build the world's largest container ships for China Shipping Container Lines.

Under the deal signed with China's number two shipper, the world's largest shipbuilder will build five vessels, each capable of carrying 18,400 TEU (20-foot equivalent unit) container boxes, Hyundai said in a statement.

Cachaca -- a national treasure in Brazil and the world's fourth most-produced distilled spirit -- is little known abroad, except as an ingredient in popular cocktails like caipirinhas.

But that could soon change now that the United States recognizes the sugar cane liquor as a distinctive Brazilian product, a move that has raised hopes of a major increase in sales to the world's biggest spirits market.