The economic crisis in southern Europe may be easing, a key survey signalled on Monday, but unemployment figures showed the eurozone jobless rate hit a previous record-high of 12.1 percent in May.

The Eurostat figures offered little hope of a quick end to the social fallout from austerity seen in many countries, with the unemployment rate for the entire European Union being unchanged at 10.9 percent.

Chinese manufacturing activity contracted further in June, data showed Monday, with a closely watched survey hitting a nine-month low and adding to signs of weakness in the world's second-largest economy.

HSBC said its final purchasing managers' index (PMI) reading came in at 48.2 last month, down from 49.2 in May and the lowest since September. It was also weaker than the bank's preliminary June figure of 48.3.

British Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled a massive oil and gas processing plant on the shores of the Caspian Sea on Monday during his first visit to ex-Soviet Kazakhstan.

The British leader landed in the oil capital of Atyrau on the Caspian Sea on Sunday where he was met by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Finnish telecommunications company Nokia on Monday said it had agreed to buy German engineering giant Siemens' 50 percent stake in their mobile broadband joint venture NSN for 1.7 billion euros ($2.2 billion).

Once the deal was concluded in the third quarter of 2013, "Nokia Siemens Networks will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Nokia", both companies said in a statement.

In blue gloves and goggles, Maria Jesus Vicent's team of young researchers busily mix chemicals in their laboratory, where they work at improving medications for cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

Theirs is a well-equipped lab, but like researchers across Spain, they warn that steep funding cuts made during the financial and economic crisis are threatening to ground their potentially life-saving work -- and driving the country's most talented scientists away.

In his first year as president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim has tried to refocus the institution on fighting poverty and climate change -- but challenges lie ahead.

The pick of the Korean-American, an academic and doctor by training, marked a radical departure from other recent heads of the Washington-based global body.

BlackBerry on Friday posted an unexpected first quarter loss and disappointing sales figures for its new smartphones, sending its share price tumbling.

The Waterloo, Ontario firm announced an $84 million loss in the first quarter ended June 1, compared with a loss of $518 million in the same period a year earlier. Revenues topped $3.1 billion, up nine percent.

European Union leaders Thursday approved a political deal on the bloc's hotly contested 2014-2020 trillion-euro budget despite British fears of a cut in its cherished rebate.

Asked whether heads of state and government had approved a deal clinched earlier in the day, Herman Van Rompuy, who heads the EU Council, said: "It's a quite clear yes."

France will stick to its current spending plans, President Francois Hollande said early Friday, despite a warning from the government's budget watchdog that the deficit might breach a revised limit recently agreed with the EU.

"What France must do in 2013 is to maintain its public spending," Hollande told reporters at the end of the first day of a two-day EU summit in Brussels.

Australia's new Treasurer Chris Bowen was Friday welcomed by business figures as he hinted at policy changes amid recession fears following an unprecedented Asia-mining boom.

Bowen, who served as assistant treasurer from late 2007 to mid- 2009 and was also minister for immigration, tertiary education and small business, was installed as treasurer on Thursday.