The world's biggest clothing group, Spain's Inditex which controls the Zara brand, posted Wednesday a record 2012 net profit as strong sales abroad, especially in Asia, and a global expansion offset belt-tightening by its domestic consumers.

Commerzbank, Germany's second-biggest bank, said Wednesday that it will undertake a 2.5-billion-euro ($3.3-billion) capital hike to repay further chunks of a state bailout it received during the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

An impoverished vendor who torched himself in a Tunis street has died, a medic said Wednesday, his act of desperation adding urgency to politicians' efforts to end Tunisia's political and economic woes.

Nearly two thirds of people in the Asia-Pacific region have no clean, piped water at home despite the region's strong economic growth, according to a major report released on Wednesday.

Cathay Pacific said on Wednesday that 2012 net profit plunged 83.3 percent, as the Hong Kong flag carrier was hit by persistently high fuel prices and the eurozone financial crisis.

After weeks of protests, Bulgaria's new technocrat caretaker government must urgently restore trust in state institutions or risk exacerbating an already dire economic situation in the European Union's poorest country, analysts say.

Interpol on Tuesday announced a deal with the world's top pharmaceutical companies to fight fake drugs which threaten the health of millions, especially in poor countries.

Shares in London closed a little higher on Tuesday, drawing support from more positive Eurozone macroeconomic news.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday he intends to nominate Kremlin economic adviser and his close ally Elvira Nabiullina to parliament as Russia's next central bank chief.

The "bad bank" set up to purge Spain's crisis-hit finance sector has begun operating and aims to sell off 1.5 billion euros' worth of toxic assets in 2013, the government said on Tuesday.

A poverty-stricken cigarette vendor set himself on fire in the centre of Tunis on Tuesday, suffering extensive burns but not endangering his life, witnesses and medics said.

Britain's manufacturing output slumped by 1.5 percent in January compared with December, official data showed on Tuesday, dealing a fresh blow to the country's hopes of avoiding a fresh recession.

Spain's borrowing costs eased as it sold 5.832 billion euros in short-term debt on Tuesday, in a sign of further-strengthening market confidence in the crisis-hit country.

Greece's international creditors will meet with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Tuesday in an attempt to iron out differences on reform measures required to open access to scheduled loans.

Data confirms recession in the eurozone's weakest economies last year, breathing new life into a heated debate on whether aggressive austerity measures may come at the cost of economic growth.

In Spain's boom years, they were a rich family's status symbol. Now abandoned as a result of the economic crisis, horses are plodding in their tens of thousands to the slaughterhouse.

An estimated 233 million women in their fertile years will lack access to modern contraception by 2015, up from 221 million in 2010, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The International Monetary Fund said Monday that it could provide an emergency short-term loan to Egypt if needed, as talks for a longer-term $4.8 billion financing program have bogged down.

European stock markets closed on Monday with mixed but mainly weaker results as disappointing Chinese economic data offset positive job numbers out of the United States, analysts said.

Greece on Monday appointed its third privatisation chief in a less than year as it struggled to speed up delayed state asset sales to meet bailout goals.