Washing machines, fish fingers and football teams: not even household names are safe from a Spanish bankruptcy epidemic ravaging big and small businesses alike.

The number of companies filing for bankruptcy in Spain rose from 1,147 in 2007, the year before Spain's real estate bubble disastrously burst, to nearly 6,200 in 2009, according to the National Statistics Institute.

Iraq is optimistic about resolving a long-running dispute over plans by the country's autonomous Kurdish region to export oil to international markets through Turkey, its oil minister said on Tuesday.

Asked by reporters if he was optimistic about a deal to enable the Kurdish exports, Iraqi Oil Minister Abdelkarim al-Luaybi told reporters: "Yes."

Apple has acquired social media analytics firm Topsy for more than $200 million, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The newspaper, citing sources familiar with the deal, said it was unclear how Apple planned to use the firm but that it could be related to Apple's new streaming music service.

Asian nations cemented their top positions in an eagerly awaited report on global education Tuesday, as their students continued to outshine Western counterparts in maths, science and reading.

Shanghai again ranked first in maths, science and reading in the three-yearly report by the Paris-based OECD, based on surveys of more than half a million 15-year-olds in 65 countries.

Crisis-hit Greece has taken steps to fight corruption while Spain is dragging its feet on tackling bribery, graft watchdog Transparency International said as it released its annual report Tuesday.

"That's one of the most interesting issues for us, the difference between Spain and Greece," Finn Heinrich, lead researcher of the group's 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, told Agence France Presse.

The WTO launches a frantic drive on Tuesday to salvage its floundering efforts to liberalize global trade at a summit laced with potential make-or-break implications for the body's global influence.

WTO chief Roberto Azevedo implored trade ministers to reach a modest agreement on key trade issues on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, in hopes it will keep alive a stumbling 12-year-old effort to slash international trade barriers.

Australia's central bank held interest rates at their record 2.50 percent low Tuesday, saying the effects of earlier cuts had still to be fully felt.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) kept rates on pause for a fourth consecutive month, as widely expected, after a series of cuts designed to stimulate the economy as its decade-long Asia mining boom cools.

France's Socialist government is to maintain most of the existing restrictions on Sunday shopping, despite criticism that they are ill-suited to a country battling record unemployment.

Speaking after the publication of a government-sponsored report which called for a partial easing of the curbs, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the government would legislate to clear up anomalies in the patchwork of local and national rules governing Sunday trading.

Australia's largest ever consumer class action in which bank customers are fighting for the return of more than Aus$240 million (U.S.$220 million) in fees began in Melbourne on Monday.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn is representing some 43,500 ANZ Bank customers who believe a wide range of charges they paid were excessive, in the first of several trials planned as part of the case.

The second daughter of Samsung chairman Lee Kun-Hee has been made a president at the firm's de-facto holding company, it said Monday, cement his family's hold on the South Korean giant.

Lee Seo-Hyun will lead management planning at the Everland's fashion business, Samsung said in a statement.