As India celebrated becoming the first Asian nation to reach Mars, S.M. Vaidya, head of business at conglomerate Godrej's aerospace division that made the spacecraft's engine and thruster components, sounded surprisingly downbeat.

The U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in 2-1/2 years in the second quarter with all sectors contributing to the jump in output in a bullish signal for the remainder of the year.

China will more strictly police the expansion of cities to stop the spread of highly developed but sparsely populated cities or districts known as ghost towns, the state-backed Beijing News reported on Friday.

U.S. companies are increasingly less optimistic about the business outlook in China, and see growing competition from local rivals who get preferential treatment as a key challenge, a survey showed on Friday.

China boosted the quotas it gives foreign institutions to invest in domestic securities by the largest amount in the third quarter since the final quarter of 2012 and regulators may also raise the limit on a parallel yuan-denominated program.

China's steel consumption dropped this year for the first time since at least 2000 due to slower economic growth, leading to a surplus of iron ore in the country and a more than 40 percent plunge in prices of the steelmaking raw material.

China and Spain are set to sign business deals worth a total of about 3 billion euros ($3.8 billion) in Beijing this week, an official said, as Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy visits the Asian giant to drum up support for his country's economy.

Rosneft (ROSN.MM), Russia's biggest crude oil producer, may back out of a deal to buy Morgan Stanley (MS.N)'s oil trading unit because Western sanctions make it virtually impossible to finance day-to-day operations, three sources close to the state-controlled company said.

India's low-cost mission to Mars successfully entered the red planet's orbit on Wednesday, crowning what Prime Minister Narendra Modi said was a "near impossible" push to become the only country to complete the trip on its maiden attempt.

China, the world's top consumer of cotton, will slash its import quotas for 2015 to boost demand for domestic fiber, a senior official said on Monday, driving futures prices in both China and the United States lower.