Japan said Thursday that its economy grew again in the quarter to March, pointing to a recovery as Tokyo and its hand-picked central bank team set about stoking the world's third-largest economy.

The 0.9 percent on-quarter growth -- or 3.5 percent on an annualized basis if the data were stretched over a year -- confirmed Japan's exit from recession as consumers spent more, although the nation's cautious firms did not follow suit.

State owned Kuwait Airways Co has chosen Airbus over the Boeing Co on the purchase or lease of new airplanes, Kuwaiti Communications Minister Salem al-Othaina said on Wednesday.

"KAC received two offers from Airbus and Boeing and the board of directors approved the offer from Airbus because it is lower in cost," Othaina told the official KUNA news agency.

New Zealand on Thursday bucked the international trend toward austerity budgets and lifted spending modestly, while still predicting its books will be back in the black within two years.

Finance Minister Bill English said that after taking a battering from the global financial crisis and the deadly Christchurch earthquake in 2011, prospects were looking good for New Zealand's economy.

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday approved a $1.33 billion (1.0 billion euro) bailout loan for Cyprus and released the first $110.7 million to the Cypriot government.

The loan is part of a combined $13 billion (10 billion euro) emergency financing deal set by the IMF and the European Stability Mechanism that aims to support the government as it seeks to stabilize the ravaged Cypriot banking sector.

France fell into recession in the first quarter of this year with the economy shrinking by 0.2 percent, official figures showed Wednesday, in further bad news for President Francois Hollande's embattled Socialist government.

The data from the official INSEE statistics agency came exactly a year after Hollande's inauguration, with the president already struggling to tackle a 16-year high in unemployment and record-low approval ratings.

Asia-focused bank HSBC announced on Wednesday that it will make another $2-3 billion (1.5-2.3 billion euros) of new cost savings by 2016, extending its restructuring plans.

The lender said in a statement that it will seek the additional sustainable cost savings on top of its wide-ranging restructuring process that was launched in 2011.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's tough exterior cracked Wednesday as she choked back tears while introducing a bill into parliament on disability reforms.

The country's first female leader, seen as a hard-talking survivor in male-dominated politics, spoke in a quivering voice of people with disabilities she had recently met.

China's central bank, which manages the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, is looking into a growing scandal over the access journalists at Bloomberg News had to potentially sensitive data, reports said Wednesday.

The People's Bank of China (PBoC) is the latest major financial organisation to examine the controversy involving the financial news wire, whose terminals are used by officials at many of the world's most important financial institutions and banks.

Borrowing costs for Spain eased as it raised 4.047 billion euros in short-term debt on Tuesday, a sign of further-strengthening market confidence in the crisis-hit country.

The sale offered further encouragement for the eurozone's fourth-biggest economy, which last year resisted speculation that it would need a sovereign bailout to rescue its public finances.

Consumer prices in Hungary rose by 1.7 percent in April over 12 months, the lowest inflation rate since 1974, the national statistics office KSH said on Thursday.

The rate was down from a 2.2-percent in March.