Syrian refugees wait in line for food at a Turkish refugee camp -- not crowding around an aid truck but queuing at an ordinary supermarket to pay for goods using electronic debit cards.

Under the experimental project launched by the U.N. World Food Program and the Turkish Red Crescent, thousands of refugees who have fled the conflict raging in their homeland now receive cards charged with aid credits rather than boxes of basic supplies.

Greece's economy shrank by 6.9 percent in the third quarter of the year, compared with the same period in 2011.

The national statistics agency says that the decrease was less than the 7.2 percent drop estimated in November, based on new data that wasn't available last month.

India's parliament on Friday approved the government's plans to open up the country's massive retail sector to international big-box companies such as Wal-Mart.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's beleaguered government won the vote in the upper house of parliament on Friday, two days after it had won a similar approval in the powerful lower house.

The Washington Post, one of the last top U.S. newspapers to offer its content free of charge online, will likely begin collecting fees next year, a report said Thursday.

The Post is planning to roll out a "metered paywall," meaning the subscription cost will kick in after readers access a certain number of stories for free, said The Wall Street Journal, another leading U.S. paper.

Asian markets mostly climbed Friday, following a positive lead from Wall Street, while the euro extended the losses made in New York after the ECB cut its growth forecast for the eurozone.

Seoul gained 0.4 percent, or 7.83 points, to 1,957.45 and Sydney added 0.94 percent, or 42.5 points, to close at 4,551.8 but Tokyo ended 0.19 percent, or 17.77 points, down at 9,527.39.

The U.S. Congress voted Thursday to end Cold War-era trade restrictions on Russia after it joined the WTO, but provoked Moscow's ire by attaching a measure targeting human rights abusers.

Following approval by the House of Representatives last month, the Senate voted 92-4 in favor of establishing permanent normal trade relations, or PNTR, with Russia by abolishing a 1974 law that required granting normal trade ties with Moscow only on an annual basis.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will produce one of its existing lines of Mac computers in the United States next year.

Cook made the comments in part of an interview taped for NBC's "Rock Center," but aired Thursday morning on "Today" and posted on the network's website.

The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment aid fell sharply last week as a temporary spike caused by Superstorm Sandy has faded. Weekly applications have fallen back to a level consistent with modest hiring.

The Labor Department said Thursday that applications dropped 25,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 370,000.

Barclays on Thursday said it had agreed a deal to combine the majority of the British bank's Africa operations with Absa -- the lender's African subsidiary.

"This transaction will give us a platform from which we can further grow our Africa business to the benefit of customers, colleagues, shareholders and the communities in which we operate," Barclays chief executive Antony Jenkins said in a statement.

China will allow transit passengers from 45 countries including the U.S., Canada and all members of the EU to spend up to 72 hours in Beijing without a visa from next month, city authorities said.

The move would "strongly spur the development of the tourism industry, speed up building of an international city (and) expand contacts with the rest of the world," the Beijing Tourism Administration said on its website.