U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday claimed a mandate to raise taxes on the rich to pay for deficit reductions, firing his first post-election shot in a year-end budget showdown with Republicans.

"We can't just cut our way to prosperity. If we are serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue, and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes," he said.

Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said Thursday that his successor Mario Monti had pursued an economic programme that "hurts" the country, as a general election looms early next year.

"The government has espoused an economic policy that hurts the country. All the figures have worsened over the past year," Berlusconi told reporters after a meeting of the centre-right People of Freedom party he founded.

Inflation in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, remained steady at the European Central Bank's pain threshold of 2.0 percent in October, official data showed on Friday.

The German consumer price index (CPI) rose by 2.0 percent on a 12-month basis this month, according to final cost-of-living data from all of Germany's 16 regional states.

Britain's tax authorities have launched a probe into HSBC bank over offshore accounts opened in Jersey by serious criminals living in the UK, the Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

The Revenue and Customs department opened the inquiry after a whistleblower handed them details of every British client holding an account with the banking giant in the low-tax Channel Island, according to the paper.

Iberia is to shed 4,500 jobs in a bid to save Spain's biggest airline from collapse and more may follow amid the economic crisis in the eurozone country, parent group International Airlines Group said on Friday.

"Iberia is in (a) fight for survival," the carrier's chief executive Rafael Sanchez-Lozano said in a statement issued by IAG, which also owns British Airways.

The U.S.-based fast food chain Burger King will open its first branch in South Africa early next year, local partners announced on Thursday, setting up a new battleground in the war with rival McDonald's.

"Now is the time to develop the brand in South Africa," said Grand Parade Investments executive Jose Cil as he announced the decision to establish a branch in Cape Town.

The European Central Bank is unlikely to fire the new anti-crisis "bazooka" it unveiled two months ago, and will keep its gunpowder dry on interest rates as well at its meeting on Thursday, analysts said.

The ECB's OMT bond-purchase program -- announced by president Mario Draghi in September -- has been credited with marking a turning point in financial market sentiment towards the crisis-wracked euro even though it has not actually been used.

Germany, which has emerged as the dominant player in the eurozone crisis, has breathed a sigh of relief over reforms unveiled by France owing to fears that a key partner could go the way of Greece.

Berlin has seen the centre of gravity in Europe creep ever more in its direction during three years of eurozone turmoil due to its role as paymaster, and cautiously but clearly welcomed French measures laid out on Tuesday.

Japan's current account surplus shrank 68.7 percent in September from a year earlier, hit by lower exports and falling returns on overseas investment, official data showed Thursday.

The surplus in the current account, the broadest measure of Japan's trade with the rest of the world, stood at 503.6 billion yen ($6.3 billion) in September, the finance ministry said.

A huge protest outside the Greek parliament turned violent Wednesday ahead of a late-night vote on a deeply unpopular new austerity bill, as demonstrators hurled petrol bombs and police fired tear gas to disperse them.

As a general strike called by the two main labor unions paralyzed the country for a second straight day, more than 70,000 people turned out to protest the new 18.5-billion-euro ($23.6-billion) belt-tightening package.