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President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that Europe's debt crisis must be contained.

China should guard against risks from "excessive" holdings of U.S. assets as Washington could pursue a policy to weaken the dollar, a senior official at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said in comments published on Tuesday.

The euro zone's economic crisis is over and it is now enjoying a broad-based recovery, Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer said.

Portugal will elect a new government on Sunday which will lead the country through a period of deep austerity and recession after it received a 78-billion-euro ($114 billion) bailout from the European Union and IMF.

The rising labor costs for companies that supply Chinese goods to the West may result in higher consumer prices.

Tunisia's government said it needs $125 billion in funding over the next five years to finance a massive economic program aimed at boosting growth and cutting unemployment, state-run news agency TAP said on Sunday.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Tuesday unveiled $6 billion in funding to help Tunisia and Egypt address budget and reserve shortfalls this year and next, following popular uprisings that ended years of dictatorships but which have caused economic stress.

Fueling the demonstrators’ anger is the perceived failure by politicians to alleviate the hardships imposed on a struggling population by a jobless rate of 21 percent.

A contraction in the first quarter at an annual rate of 3.7 percent was worse than economists had expected.

Euro zone finance ministers are ready to back an EU/IMF bailout of Portugal at a Monday meeting overshadowed by the arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges.