India's government in April launched its Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC) as a prospective alternative to dominant global giants Amazon.com and Walmart in its fast-growing e-commerce market.

South Korea's factory activity growth slowed in May, as output and export orders contracted amid supply-chain disruptions due to China's COVID-19 lockdown measures, a private-sector survey showed on Thursday.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India's effort to break Amazon Inc and Walmart Inc's dominance of its e-commerce sector, by establishing its own open network, has begun lining up banks and other key players needed to move it forward, sources familiar with the matter said.

Six of the seven EU countries outside the euro zone are still not ready to join, the European Commission said in a report on Wednesday, with only Croatia meeting all the criteria to start using the EU currency from 2023.

Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (KSOE) has mostly filled its order book for the next 2-1/2 years as the pandemic drove demand for container ships, leaving little room to meet the needs of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector, a senior company executive said.

Businesses in the sleepy Italian town of Cartigliano are so worried about its declining birth rate and lack of workers that they have begun paying families' nursery school fees and childcare costs to spur them to have more babies.