Japan said Thursday that growth halved in the July-September quarter as exports weakened and consumer spending slowed, but economists were divided over what it meant for Tokyo's drive to fire up the economy.

The once-anaemic economy has lately been outpacing growth in other G7 nations as a policy blitz led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe helped push down the yen, giving a boost to exporters and sparking a stock market rally.

Britain's economic recovery "has finally taken hold", the Bank of England said on Wednesday as it upgraded its growth forecasts despite headwinds from the eurozone debt crisis.

The BoE added that unemployment could fall faster than expected, signalling that its key interest rate could rise from the current record-low level sooner than anticipated.

Spanish inflation slowed to zero in October, official data showed, in line with falling rates around Europe which have raised the risk of deflation that could threaten economic recovery.

Spain's inflation rate, a measure of the rise in consumer prices, slowed by half a percentage point from the previous month to zero in October, the National Statistics Institute said.

Japanese lawmakers on Wednesday grilled the head of one of the country's biggest banks over a mob loans scandal, as another major lender admitted it may have been involved in shady dealings with gangsters.

Mizuho Financial Group President Yasuhiro Sato apologized for his firm's role in the widening scandal as lawmakers questioned him about Mizuho's surveillance and his future at the bank, after he earlier refused to step down.

The economies of Arab countries rocked by the uprisings that swept the region two years ago, remain sluggish because of unfinished political transitions, a top IMF official told Agence France Presse.

Others are suffering from the financial and social burdens imposed on them by a huge influx of refugees from the civil war in Syria, International Monetary Fund director for the Middle East and Central Asia Masood Ahmed said in an interview.

Reducing the gender wage gap could generate extra GDP of $1 trillion in a decade in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan (MENAP) region, the IMF said on Tuesday.

"The gap (in the region) is three times the gap in emerging markets as a whole," said Masood Ahmed, the International Monetary Fund's Middle East and Central Asia director.

Express delivery and freight company Deutsche Post DHL saw its net profit rise 6 percent in the third quarter as its parcel business in Germany benefited from growth in online retailing.

The company said Tuesday that its net profit reached 399 million euros ($534 million), up from 377 million in the same quarter last year. The figure was just short of the average analyst estimate of 403 million euros compiled by financial information provider FactSet.

The vice president of the European Commission has said that taxpayer-funded bank bailouts remain a possibility if the current round of stress tests of Europe's biggest banks reveal significant capital shortfalls — or if Europe's debt crisis were to really flare up again.

However, Joaquin Almunia repeated that the governments' preferred method remains to force investors such as shareholders, bondholders and ultimately depositors, to pay first.

Five years after a global financial crisis erupted, the world's biggest economies still need to be propped up.

They're growing and hiring a little faster and creating more jobs, but only with extraordinary aid from central banks or government spending. And economists say major countries may need help for years more.

The United States and the European Union, which already enjoy the world's biggest business relationship, are resuming talks on a deal to further grow two-way trade and investment.

The negotiations take place against the backdrop of European pique over reported U.S. electronic espionage, and were delayed due to the U.S. government shutdown. But officials for both sides say the benefits of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are too great for the talks to be affected.