European Union President Herman Van Rompuy urged an "immediate fight" against unemployment during a visit to Rome on Friday, as Italy's jobless rate hit a record with little sign of any let-up soon.

"It is a challenge that we need to meet as a matter of urgency," Van Rompuy said after talks with Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta who has pushed for youth unemployment to be top of the agenda at an EU summit in Brussels next month.

Unemployment across the 17 EU countries that use the euro hit another record high in April, official figures showed Friday, the latest in a series of ignominious landmarks for the ailing single currency zone.

Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said Friday that unemployment rose to 12.2 percent in April from the previous record of 12.1 percent the month before. Another 95,000 people joined the ranks of the unemployed, taking the total to 19.38 million. At this pace, unemployment in the eurozone could breach the 20 million mark this year.

OPEC ministers said they expected to hold oil output levels unchanged despite concern about global demand as they started a crucial meeting in Vienna on Friday.

Questioned about whether the cartel would seek to roll over its daily output target, Angolan Oil Minister Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos said it was likely.

Japan is to pledge at least $10 billion in aid to Africa for the next five years, reports said Friday, as Tokyo prepared to host a major development conference for the resource-rich continent.

Coupled with expected corporate investments, Japan's public and private sectors look set to pour around three trillion yen ($30 billion) into Africa by 2018, as Japan Inc. rushes for a piece of the promising African market, the Nikkei said.

Workers at the Lisbon metro went on strike Thursday and businesses came to a standstill across Portugal to protest government austerity measures aimed at slashing the deficit and meeting the terms of an international bailout.

"We anticipate strong participation by workers who will also show their availability for a more general struggle," said Armenio Carlos, the secretary general of the country's largest trade union, the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP), which organised the day of protest.

The European Commission laid down its economic targets Wednesday for EU nations desperately seeking growth and jobs in the fallout from the debt crisis but gave France and Spain extra time in return for deeper reforms.

The debt crisis has seen Brussels gain additional powers to ensure EU member states toe the line to avoid future trouble -- just as well, when 20 of the 27 were under surveillance for breaching the bloc's public deficit and debt limits, respectively at three percent and 60 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, stung by criticism she is cracking the whip of fiscal discipline in Europe, has shown a more caring approach by pledging to fight record youth unemployment on the crisis-hit continent.

The declared new enemy in Berlin, aside from sloppy budgets and bloated bureaucracies, is the threat of a "lost generation" of young people without jobs, skills or hope, especially in hard-hit Greece and Spain.

Fewer Europeans are planning to go away for a summer holiday as economic austerity bites, a new study shows, with levels of foreign vacation travel at their lowest for eight years.

No more than 54 percent of Europeans are planning to get away for summer holiday this year, according to the Ipsos-Europ Assistance "holiday barometer" published Thursday.

Syria's oil production has crashed to 20,000 barrels per day, or five percent of its pre-war output, Oil Minister Sleiman Abbas said, quoted on Wednesday in the ruling party's Al-Baath daily.

"The terrorism of armed groups (rebels) and the unjust (Western) embargo imposed on Syria" were to blame for the collapse, he told a session of parliament.

Swiss banks could be forced to hand over the names of their employees under a prospective deal between Switzerland and Washington that aims to end a dispute over alleged tax evasion, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

"All the banks with significant business in the United States could be required to submit their correspondence to American authorities, as well as the names of their employees," the daily Tages Anzeiger said.