WORLD FINANCE UPDATE:
The Australian dollar is down as Wall Street suffers following further losses on Chinese stock markets.
At 0700 AEDT on Thursday, the local unit was trading at 69.61 US cents, down from 70.26 cents on Wednesday.
And the Australian share market looks set to open sharply lower after Wall Street gave up early gains and fell into the red, and oil struggled to remain the $US30 mark.
At 0645 AEDT on Thursday, the share price index was down 111 points at 4,826.
ELSEWHERE:
WASHINGTON - The US economy continued to show mixed signals from late November to early January, with improvements in the labour market and consumer spending offset by the drag of a strong dollar and low energy prices, the Federal Reserve says.
ATHENS - Greece has emerged from 33 months of deflation in December, finally seeing some price rises after a bruising period of economic decline and political upheaval.
LONDON - British takeover target Home Retail says it's in advanced talks to sell its Homebase home improvement stores to Australia's Wesfarmers for STG340 million ($A702.99 million), allowing it to focus on its Argos chain.
NEW YORK - General Electric says it will move its global headquarters to Boston, tapping the city's technology talent as the industrial conglomerate seeks to emphasise its digital capabilities.
WASHINGTON - Volkswagen chief executive Matthias Mueller has met with the top US environmental official for about an hour just a day after US regulators rejected a plan to fix hundreds of thousands of diesel cars with excess emissions as inadequate and not fast enough.
GENEVA - North Korea's foreign minister is no longer invited to the World Economic Forum's annual Davos meeting at the end of January after the country's latest nuclear test, organisers said.
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