President Barack Obama on Monday pledged to unveil "bold" ideas to help America's struggling middle class as part of a fresh offensive to boost the economy.

Speaking to members of the Organizing for Action (OFA) group, the U.S. leader previewed speeches on the economy he is due to make later this week.

The United Arab Emirates ordered two military surveillance satellites from France on Monday, in a deal worth more than 700 million euros ($913.2 million).

The Falcon Eye deal, signed in Abu Dhabi over competition from Lockheed Martin of the United States, includes the supply and launch of two high-resolution Helios surveillance satellites, a control station and training for 20 UAE engineers.

Swiss banking giant UBS said Monday it had settled a lawsuit linked to U.S. subprime housing mortgages which sparked the 2008 global financial crisis.

The bank did not specify how much the settlement amounted to, but said it has set aside 865 million Swiss francs ($922 million, 700 million euros) in the second quarter to meet litigation costs including the case.

Russia and Syria are discussing the possibility of Moscow extending a loan to Damascus to help Syria's civil war battered economy, a top Syrian official said Monday.

Visiting Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said that the issue was discussed at talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Damascus hoped for an agreement by the end of the year.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew praised the "hard work" of Greece's prime minister Antonis Samaras on Sunday and urged his government to continue with economic reform.

Lew publicly declared his confidence in the conservative administration of Samaras following a meeting in Athens.

The G20 on Saturday agreed to make boosting growth and jobs, rather than deficit reduction, the short-term priority for the global economy as it battles to consolidate a "fragile and uneven" recovery.

Finance chiefs from the G20 group of advanced and emerging nations, after meeting in Moscow, also backed an action plan drawn up by the OECD to crack down on tax avoidance by multinationals to help replenish budgets diminished by the slowdown.

Embattled Brazilian energy magnate Eike Batista said Friday he is deeply disappointed by the virtual collapse of his business empire and vowed to pay off all of his EBX group's debts.

In an open letter carried by the daily O Globo, the man who was once the country's richest lamented his failure to deliver on the promises of his OGX flagship oil company.

Success stories can be rare in Pakistan, but business is booming in one Kashmir tourist spot as the region rebuilds after a devastating earthquake and shrugs off associations with violence.

Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani tourists drawn to the lakes and glaciers of the Neelum valley are injecting desperately needed money into one of the poorest parts of the country.

The Olympic Games in London last year gave the British economy a boost worth $15 billion, the government said on Friday, a figure far higher than the cost of staging the event.

Business Secretary Vince Cable, putting the benefits at £9.9 billion (11.5 billion euros), conceded that some of the investment might have happened anyway, but insisted the Games had acted as a "key catalyst" for deals to be agreed.

Ratings firm Moody's raised its outlook on the United States on Thursday to "stable" from "negative," citing the federal government's progress in putting debt on a more sustainable path.

Moody's "today moved the outlook on the Aaa government bond rating of the United States back to stable, replacing the negative outlook that has been in place since August 2011," the company said in a statement.