More than 170 countries Monday adopted what World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Margaret Chan called a "game-changing" global pact to combat the illegal tobacco trade.

The treaty envisages an international tracking system which aims to halt the smuggling and counterfeiting of tobacco products -- a trade which accounts for 11 percent of the total tobacco market and costs governments an estimated $40 billion in lost tax revenue.

Japan pledged Saturday to launch projects worth $700 million in Central Asia to help the resource-rich region promote trade, energy-saving and regional cooperation in stabilizing nearby Afghanistan.

The commitment followed a meeting in Tokyo between foreign ministers from Japan and five Central Asian nations -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The worst of Europe's financial crisis appears to be over.

European leaders have taken steps to ease the panic that has plagued the region for three turbulent years. Financial markets are no longer in a state of emergency over Europe's high government debts and weak banks. And this gives politicians from the 17 countries that use the euro breathing room to fix their remaining problems.

China's export growth accelerated in October in fresh evidence of a broader rebound for the world's second-largest economy just as the Communist Party grapples with how to boost recovery from a rare slowdown.

Exports rose 11.6 percent in October from a year earlier to $175.6 billion, the national customs bureau said Saturday, strengthening for a second straight month and beating economists' expectations.

Brussels has given a much needed boost to Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras as he seeks to reassure Greeks that a long-delayed installment of crucial international aid was well on its way.

Stournaras said Friday "there is no reason to worry" even as a four-billion-euro debt payment loomed and Germany warned that a deal on the aid could be weeks away.

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.