Brazilian authorities are investigating claims that a supplier for Spanish clothing brand Zara is forcing workers to toil in inhumane conditions, a labor ministry spokesman told Agence France Presse Wednesday.

The probe that began in May focuses on unsanitary conditions and long working hours endured by workers -- some of them undocumented Bolivians -- in factories in the city of Americana, an industrial town outside Sao Paulo.

Downbeat Japanese export and British retail sales figures renewed worries over the state of the global economy on Thursday and hit already fragile confidence in stock markets.

Investors are worried about both the debt situation in both the U.S. and Europe and the pace of the global economic recovery following a run of weak economic data.

Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality he says is behind Europe's current economic crisis. The pontiff insisted that morals and ethics must play a greater role in formulating economic policy in the future.

"Man must be at the center of the economy and the economy must not be measured only by the maximization of profit but according to the common good," the pontiff told reporters aboard his plane as he traveled to Madrid for the Catholic Church's World Youth Day.

The Lebanese subsidiary of a Syrian bank sanctioned by the United States denied on Wednesday "unfounded political allegations" that it dealt with North Korea and Iran.

"Since the establishment of our institution, we have never had any operation with either a North Korean or an Iranian entity even before the existing sanctions," the Syrian Lebanese Commercial Bank said.

President Barack Obama accused Republican Tea Party activists of holding back the economic recovery Tuesday, hiking pressure on Congress to pass his yet-to-be unveiled jobs plan.

On the second day of a three-day bus tour of midwestern states, Obama expanded on his theme that political brinksmanship in Washington was harming America's capacity to speed up the slowed recovery.

Tobacco companies want a judge to put a stop to new graphic cigarette labels that include the sewn-up corpse of a smoker and pictures of diseased lungs, saying they unfairly urge adults to shun their legal products and will cost millions to produce.

Four of the five largest U.S. tobacco companies sued the federal government Tuesday, saying the warnings violate their free speech rights.

A Chinese lawyer is suing a state-owned energy giant and its U.S. partner over a huge oil spill off China's northeast coast, amid public anger over the resulting pollution, state media said Wednesday.

More than 2,100 barrels of oil and oil-based mud -- a substance used as a lubricant in undersea drilling -- have leaked from two platforms in Bohai Bay jointly owned by ConocoPhillips and China's CNOOC.

The euro recovered from an early wobble in Asian trade Wednesday as forex markets shrugged off a Eurozone meeting that failed to land a killer blow in the battle to restore debt confidence.

Shares were mixed, with local concerns largely trumping global uncertainties in Sydney and Seoul, while Tokyo kept its eyes on the main world news.

Asian stocks were mixed on Tuesday, despite impressive gains at the start of the week and a positive lead from Wall Street.

Tokyo finished 0.23 percent, or 21.02 points, up at 9,107.43 and Seoul added a whopping 4.83 percent, or 86.56 points, to 1,879.87, after a public holiday on Monday.

European stocks sank Tuesday on news of a sharp slowdown in Eurozone powerhouse Germany, and before crisis talks on the economy between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In morning trade, Frankfurt's DAX 30 index of leading shares dived 2.29 percent to 5,884.61 points, the Paris CAC 40 dropped 1.47 percent to 3,191.41 points and London's FTSE 100 slid 0.77 percent to 5,309.4.