South Korea's inflation touched a 14-year low in May on falling fuel costs and stabilizing food prices, government data showed Monday.

The consumer price index for May rose 1.0 percent from a year ago -- the slowest rate since September 1999 -- state-run Statistics Korea said. It marked the seven straight month that inflation has stayed under 2.0 percent.

Global newspaper chiefs have some rare good news to share after years of slumping print sales and advertising revenues -- readers appear increasingly willing to pay for online news.

Over 1,000 newspaper editors and other media figures are meeting in Bangkok this week as papers continue to shed readers -- at least in the older markets -- and the shift to the Internet draws more "eyeballs" but lower ad rates.

Court orders were issued on Friday freezing more than five billion euros in assets of three Greek former executives of the island's now defunct Laiki Bank, the Cyprus central bank said.

It said the special administrator of Laiki Bank, Andri Antoniades, has obtained interim orders against Andreas Vgenopoulos, Efthimios Bouloutas, Kyriakos Magiras and Marfin Investment Group Holdings.

The U.S. Treasury Friday stopped re-investing in a retirement fund, a major step in its efforts to avoid exceeding the debt ceiling, according to a letter to lawmakers from Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

This is one in a slew of "extraordinary measures" announced earlier in the month by Lew, to help the government continue functioning until at least September 2 without borrowing any new funds, as Congress refuses to raise the debt limit.

Greece on Friday received a vote of confidence from international creditors over progress in overhauling its stricken economy -- and a fresh injection of cash from the International Monetary Fund.

In Washington, the IMF announced it had released 1.74 billion euros ($2.26 billion) in fresh funds after Greece passed a third performance review -- part of the terms of the joint IMF-EU bailout.

Paris investigators placed the French branch of Swiss bank UBS under formal investigation Friday on suspicion it helped try to persuade rich French clients to open undeclared accounts in Switzerland, a legal source said.

UBS was also named as an "assisted witness" in an investigation into a money laundering ope ration that was part of a tax fraud, the source added.

With foreign reserves diminishing fast, Pakistan is on the brink of an economic crisis that may force its new government to ask for an unpopular bailout from the International Monetary Fund requiring a sweeping overhaul of the country's economy.

The troubles could inject a new element of instability into the nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people that Washington is relying on to combat Islamic militants at home and to help negotiate an end to the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

European Union President Herman Van Rompuy urged an "immediate fight" against unemployment during a visit to Rome on Friday, as Italy's jobless rate hit a record with little sign of any let-up soon.

"It is a challenge that we need to meet as a matter of urgency," Van Rompuy said after talks with Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta who has pushed for youth unemployment to be top of the agenda at an EU summit in Brussels next month.

Unemployment across the 17 EU countries that use the euro hit another record high in April, official figures showed Friday, the latest in a series of ignominious landmarks for the ailing single currency zone.

Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said Friday that unemployment rose to 12.2 percent in April from the previous record of 12.1 percent the month before. Another 95,000 people joined the ranks of the unemployed, taking the total to 19.38 million. At this pace, unemployment in the eurozone could breach the 20 million mark this year.

OPEC ministers said they expected to hold oil output levels unchanged despite concern about global demand as they started a crucial meeting in Vienna on Friday.

Questioned about whether the cartel would seek to roll over its daily output target, Angolan Oil Minister Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos said it was likely.