Advertising spending on the Internet jumped 12.5 percent in Britain last year, defying a flagging economy as companies battled to reach consumers spending more time on smartphones and tablet computers.

British businesses could face a 450-billion-pound (US$688.29 billion) bill as a result of plans to force pension funds to protect themselves from risk with extra capital, data from Europe's insurance and pensions watchdog showed.

British banks could pay up to a quarter more to be supervised as two new watchdogs adopt more intrusive regulation and impose higher fines which will be paid into the coffers of cash-strapped government.

German exports fell in February, official data showed on Tuesday in another sign that Europe's biggest economy has not fully recovered from a dip at the end of last year.

As the European Union's wealthiest country, Luxembourg could have been forgiven for thinking that it would never find itself on the bloc's financial risk list.

It is unacceptable for Austria to refuse to reform its bank secrecy rules, the European Commission said Monday, after fellow holdout Luxembourg signaled it was ready to change amid an EU push on tax evasion.

It was one of those statistics in which one bland number stood for history. According to the latest data from the International Monetary Fund, central banks around the world have been dumping the euro from their official national reserves: Europe's single currency now accounts for only 24 percent of the money held in the reserve vaults of developing countries, the lowest such figure since euro banknotes first physically came into circulation back in 2002.

Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho called for severe cuts in public spending after a court rejected a number of austerity measures, as the EU warned the debt-hit nation to respect the aims of its international bailout.

Greece's central bank on Sunday said the country's main four lenders would be recapitalized separately, a move that put on hold a planned merger between two of them.

With Cyprus' economy falling apart, even those behind prison bars are pulling together to help people in need.