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.

The Fitch ratings agency on Friday revised its outlook for Russia to negative from stable after the United States slapped new sanctions against Russian officials amid the Ukraine crisis.

"The revision of the outlook to negative reflects the potential impact of sanctions on Russia's economy and business environment," Fitch said in a statement.

European leaders were on Thursday to debate biting economic sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea as Ukraine tore up key ties with the Kremlin and drew up plans to evacuate its nationals from the rebel peninsula.

The European Union is under intense pressure to find a credible response to an explosive security crisis on the 28-nation bloc's eastern frontier that NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Wednesday called "the gravest threat to European security and stability since the end of the Cold War."