The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday downgraded its forecast for the French economy in 2013 and 2014, adding that it would be "hard" to reverse the unemployment trend by the end of the year.

The Washington-based organisation said France's GDP would contract by 0.2 percent this year and grow by 0.8 percent in 2014, compared to previous predictions of a 0.1 percent contraction in 2013 and 0.9 percent growth next year.

Greece must not relax a fiscal effort that is starting to bear fruit after painful sacrifices, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said on Tuesday as Athens lined up for another creditor audit.

"Now is not the time to relax the effort," Lagarde told state television NET in an interview recorded last week.

The queue of Spanish job benefit claimants shrank in May for a third straight month, raw data showed Tuesday, a result hailed by the government as it battles record unemployment.

But Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative Popular Party government admitted that May is often a good month for the labor market.

Islamic banks can help finance Asia's burgeoning infrastructure investment needs while continuing to adhere to fundamental Sharia tenets, executives said Tuesday.

Islamic banks, which emerged relatively unscathed from the global economic crisis in 2008, saw total assets top $1.6 trillion (1.22 trillion euros) in 2012, a 20.4 percent rise from 2011.

Rising demand both at home and abroad gave Germany's key mechanical engineering sector a boost in April, fueling hopes it can put its weak start to the year behind it, the industry federation said Monday.

Incoming orders rose by 8.0 percent in April compared with the same month in 2012, the VDMA association said, with domestic orders rising by 6.0 percent and export orders up as much as 10 percent.

European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi said Monday he expects a gradual recovery in the crisis-hit eurozone to start later this year despite lingering "vulnerabilities".

"The economic situation in the euro area remains challenging but there are a few signs of a possible stabilisation," he told an international monetary conference in China's financial hub of Shanghai.

South Korea's inflation touched a 14-year low in May on falling fuel costs and stabilizing food prices, government data showed Monday.

The consumer price index for May rose 1.0 percent from a year ago -- the slowest rate since September 1999 -- state-run Statistics Korea said. It marked the seven straight month that inflation has stayed under 2.0 percent.

Global newspaper chiefs have some rare good news to share after years of slumping print sales and advertising revenues -- readers appear increasingly willing to pay for online news.

Over 1,000 newspaper editors and other media figures are meeting in Bangkok this week as papers continue to shed readers -- at least in the older markets -- and the shift to the Internet draws more "eyeballs" but lower ad rates.

Court orders were issued on Friday freezing more than five billion euros in assets of three Greek former executives of the island's now defunct Laiki Bank, the Cyprus central bank said.

It said the special administrator of Laiki Bank, Andri Antoniades, has obtained interim orders against Andreas Vgenopoulos, Efthimios Bouloutas, Kyriakos Magiras and Marfin Investment Group Holdings.

The U.S. Treasury Friday stopped re-investing in a retirement fund, a major step in its efforts to avoid exceeding the debt ceiling, according to a letter to lawmakers from Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

This is one in a slew of "extraordinary measures" announced earlier in the month by Lew, to help the government continue functioning until at least September 2 without borrowing any new funds, as Congress refuses to raise the debt limit.