Swiss chocolate makers were left with a bittersweet taste in their mouths last year as a strong Swiss franc melted away the appetite for their products, the top industry body said Friday.

Switzerland's 18 chocolate manufacturers, including such brands as Lindt, Frey and Faverger, sold 4,000 fewer tonnes last year than in 2011 as an "overvalued Swiss franc ... made Swiss chocolate products more expensive abroad and made imported chocolate cheaper," Chocosuisse said in a statement.

Greece has slashed its deficit targets for the next four years following its latest international debt relief deal.

A revised mid-term strategy paper submitted to Parliament foresees the budget deficit shrinking to €7.9 billion ($10.7 billion), or 4.3 percent of the country's annual gross domestic product this year.

Mexico's competition regulator slapped a $52 million fine Thursday on billionaire tycoon Carlos Slim's Telmex telecommunications company for monopolistic practices.

The Federal Competition Commission said Telmex refused to give rival firm Axtel access to landlines in 32 towns from August 2009 to June 2011, blocking Axtel from providing local and long-distance services.

EU leaders looked ready on Friday to cut the bloc's budget for the first time in its six-decade history, with a tentative agreement to trim spending by three percent in absolute terms over the rest of the decade, diplomats said.

As marathon talks entered an 18th hour, a sustained push led by British Prime Minister David Cameron for the EU to share in the austerity cuts the 27 member states are implementing won crucial backing from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

British Prime Minister David Cameron warned on Thursday that there would be no EU budget deal without further cuts to proposals made at a summit in November that collapsed in disagreement.

"When we were last here in November, the numbers that were put forward were much too high. They need to come down. And if they don't come down, there won't be a deal," Cameron told reporters at a start of talks in Brussels.

Sixteen stories below Grand Central Terminal, an army of workers is blasting through bedrock to create a new commuter rail concourse with more floor space than New Orleans' Superdome, just one of three audacious projects going on beneath New York City's streets to expand what's already the nation's biggest mass transit system.

But even with blasting and machinery grinding through the rock day and night, most New Yorkers are blithely unaware of the construction or the eerie underworld that includes a massive, eight-story cavern, miles of tunnels and watery, gravel-filled pits.

Spain's factories slashed production for the 16th month in a row in December, official data showed Thursday, as they reacted to a slump in demand from recession-hit consumers.

Output dropped 6.9 percent in the year to December, after smoothing out seasonal blips, following a 7.0-percent plunge in November, a report by the National Statistics Institute showed.

Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse said Thursday its net profit fell 24 percent last year to 1.4 billion Swiss francs (1.2 billion euros, $1.5 billion) despite its investment bank unit rebounding into profit.

The result was below the 1.7 billion francs penciled in by analysts surveyed by the Swiss financial news agency AWP.

EU leaders head into difficult talks on the bloc's 2014-20 budget Thursday under the watchful eye of a newly assertive European parliament hostile to any major spending cuts.

In November, they tried and failed to narrow sharp differences and while most expect a compromise to emerge this time, there is no certainty other than that the budget talks will be long.

The U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday it is seeking at least $5 billion in civil penalties from Standard & Poor's for losses due to inflated ratings of mortgage bonds.

Announcing a suit against S&P and its parent, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Attorney General Eric Holder said the powerful rating agency knowingly exaggerated the ratings on financial securities, misrepresenting their true credit risk.