Facebook said Wednesday that profit in the first quarter plunged 20 percent from a year ago but revenues got a lift from robust growth in mobile advertising.

The world's biggest social network also boosted the number of users to 1.44 billion, up 13 percent from a year earlier, including 1.25 billion people who access Facebook on mobile devices.

The boss of French telecoms equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent has confirmed that he will not be taking his 2.4-million-euro "golden parachute" after the firm was swallowed up by its rival Nokia this week.

Michel Combes, who has headed the French-American company since 2013, is due to step down as part of the 15.6-billion-euro ($16.6 billion) deal to create the world's biggest supplier of mobile phone network equipment.

Economic recovery has arrived in the 19 countries that share the euro, but it is up to governments to ensure it endures, European Central Bank executive board member Benoit Coeure said Thursday.

"The eurozone recovery is clearly there. Growth is coming back, all business and household confidence indicators are pointing upwards. And the good news is that this recovery is rooted in domestic demand and in consumer spending in particular," Coeure told Agence France Presse in an interview.

An index of China's manufacturing activity fell to a 12-month low in April, HSBC said Thursday, indicating further weakness as growth sputters in the world's second-largest economy.

The first foreign bank to operate in Myanmar for decades officially opened the doors of its Yangon branch Wednesday, the latest government bid to attract  foreign investment in the emergent nation.

Myanmar's quasi-civilian administration, which replaced a military regime in 2011, is trying to modernize the country's creaking banking system to increase capital flows to local businesses and spur foreign investment, particularly in the nascent special economic zones.

Kazakhstan will not accept a single currency in a trade bloc championed by Moscow, a top official said on Wednesday, rejecting a proposal from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian leader has called for a common currency to be created in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a four-country trade grouping consisting of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Chinese technology giants Alibaba and Tencent are promising to build the cars of the future, vehicles linked seamlessly to the Internet and offering shopping and navigation help while on the road. 

E-commerce company Alibaba and WeChat messaging app provider Tencent have both announced plans for cars in the past month, along with video streaming platform Letv.

Australian consumer prices rose 0.2 percent in the three months to March, data showed Wednesday, with the annual headline inflation rate softening to give the central bank room to cut interest rates.

The slight rise in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the first-quarter of 2015 took the annual rate of inflation to 1.3 percent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics -- in line with analysts' expectations.

Argentina easily raised $500 million in a debt issue Tuesday that challenged efforts by hedge funds to force the country to pay off bonds they hold.

Buenos Aires announced the new issue late Monday of nine-year BONAR bonds at 8.75 percent interest rate under local law.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that the Russian economy likely shrank by two percent in the first three months of the year due to sanctions pressure and low oil prices.

That would be the first quarterly contraction since 2009 if confirmed, and Medvedev warned lawmakers the situation could worsen further still, in contrast to President Vladimir Putin saying last week that the worst of the economic crisis had passed.