Russian spending in British shops fell by 17 percent last month compared to February 2013, according to tax-free shopping statistics out Monday.

Visitors from Russia spent an average £669 ($1,103, 800 euros) per transaction, according to Global Blue, seeing them overtaken in third place by those from Nigeria compared to 12 months ago.

South Korea launched a gold trading exchange for the first time on Monday in a bid to help counter the country's burgeoning black market in the precious metal.

Smuggled gold is traded secretly through underground markets in South Korea and is used as an effective way to hide income and avoid tax.

Chinese manufacturing activity contracted in March to its weakest rate in eight months, data showed Monday, the latest indication of slowing growth in the world's number two economy.

The data is the latest in a string of weak indicators out of Beijing, with analysts suggesting the government could announce a series of measures to inject life back into the Asian powerhouse.

Britain's Tesco said Friday it had struck a joint venture deal with India's Tata Group to become the first foreign supermarket to enter the country's $500-billion retail sector.

The world's third-biggest retailer made the announcement after winning clearance from the Indian Foreign Investment Promotion Board for a $140-million investment in the alliance with Tata Group unit Trent Ltd.

The Moody's ratings agency has raised its outlook for Cyprus to positive, while confirming the island's Caa3 credit rating.

The agency said on Friday it was raising the outlook to positive from negative because of a stronger than expected fiscal and economic performance in 2013 and because of the authorities' record of meeting conditions set by international creditors.

Russia's annexation of the Crimea peninsula could cost Kiev hundreds of billions of dollars, Ukraine's interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on Friday, quoted by Interfax news agency.

Speaking to reporters in Kiev after signing a deal in Brussels on closer ties with the EU, Yatsenyuk said Russia was seizing "dozens of installations" from Ukraine worth "not billions, but hundreds of billions of dollars".

Visa and MasterCard have stopped servicing the credit cards of customers using Russian banks affected by the economic sanctions announced in Washington, the banks said Friday.

Bank Rossiya, used by close associates of President Vladimir Putin, said in a statement that Visa and MasterCard had "without warning stopped providing its payment services to the bank's clients."

Ukraine's interim premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Friday called for global economic pressure against Russia to halt its drive to forge "a new world order."

Speaking after the signature of a landmark EU-Ukraine partnership deal, Yatsenyuk said economic pressure was the only way to contain what he described as Moscow's unprecedented disregard for internationally agreed borders.

All but one of the 30 largest banks are now strong enough to weather another severe economic crash, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.

In the newest of the series of health examinations mandated after the 2008 financial crisis, only Zions Bancorp could not measure up to a basic capital standard in a theoretical drastic meltdown of the economy.

Japan plans to provide nearly $1.0 billion in financial aid to Ukraine, public broadcaster NHK said Friday, as relations with Russia cool over the Crimea crisis.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is to announce the support when he attends a Group of Seven meeting in the Netherlands on the sidelines of a nuclear-security summit next week, NHK said.