Apple and Google extended their dominance in the U.S smartphone market as 2012 neared its close, industry tracker comScore said on Thursday.

The share of smartphone service subscribers relying on Google's Android software inched up to 53.7 percent in the three months leading up to December, while Apple's portion grew to 35 percent from 34.3 percent, comScore reported.

Spain's right-leaning government hailed a rare glimmer of economic hope Thursday when figures showed the jobless queue shrank in December, but unemployment was still up dramatically over the year.

Millions of jobs have been destroyed in Spain since a property market crash and a global financial crisis rocked the economy in 2008.

Bank lending to private households in the eurozone contracted again in November as the region's debt crisis continues to dampen demand for credit, data showed on Thursday.

Eurozone bank loans to the private sector shrank by 0.8 percent in November from the level in the same month in 2011 after already shrinking by 0.8 percent in October, the European Central Bank said in a statement.

Turkey signed on Thursday an agreement with the United Arab Emirates for the development of coal fields in southern Turkey to generate electricity.

The agreement between Abu Dhabi-based TAQA and Turkey's state-run power company EUAS marks the biggest Arab investment in the Turkish energy sector, a senior energy ministry official told AFP.

The pan-Arab news giant Al-Jazeera bought Current TV, a struggling U.S. cable channel, Wednesday in a deal aimed at giving the Qatar-based broadcaster the scope to challenge major American TV networks.

Current, co-founded by former U.S. vice president Al Gore, announced the sale in a statement that was later confirmed by Al-Jazeera. The acquisition will allow the latter to reach millions more U.S. homes than it does at present.

President Barack Obama has signed into law a contentious compromise bill hammered out in Congress that narrowly averted the U.S. 'fiscal cliff of tax hikes and drastic, immediate cuts in spending, the White House said early Thursday.

In a statement, the White House said that Obama late on Wednesday signed the "American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012," raising taxes on households earning above $450,000 and delaying spending decisions for two months.

Asian markets were mixed Thursday following the previous day's huge gains after U.S. lawmakers agreed a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, while concerns over upcoming fights in Washington hurt sentiment.

The yen clawed back some of its losses against the euro and dollar but remains under pressure on expectations of further monetary easing by the Bank of Japan.

Dubai's Emirates Airlines began operations on Wednesday from the world's first concourse dedicated to Airbus' A380 super jumbos at the Gulf emirate's rapidly expanding airport.

Concourse A, which cost $3 billion (2.3 billion euros) to build, gives Emirates -- one of the fastest-growing carriers -- an additional airport capacity of 15 million passengers a year, the company said.

World markets soared Wednesday after a tense New Year break, relieved after U.S. lawmakers agreed a last-minute deal to avert massive tax hikes and pull their nation back from the fiscal cliff.

Congress voted overnight on a stop-gap agreement that avoided across-the-board tax hikes and automatic spending cuts that had threatened to unleash economic turmoil and perhaps drive America back into recession.

Spanish consumer prices rose by 3.0 percent over the year to December as a sales tax rise hit shoppers in the pocket, provisional figures showed Wednesday.

The inflation rate was unchanged from November, said a report by the National Statistics Institute, which gave no breakdown of prices in the month.