Japan on Thursday passed its biggest-ever budget, a $937 billion spending package aimed at propping up growth as consumers brace for the country's first sales tax hike in over 15 years.

A total of 136 lawmakers in the 242-member upper house, controlled by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, voted for the package, against 102 opposition votes, a parliamentary spokesman said. Two lawmakers did not cast a vote, one seat is vacant and the house speaker only casts a ballot in a tie.

Hundreds of Taiwanese activists were locked in a tense standoff with police Wednesday after they stormed parliament to try to stop the government ratifying a contentious trade agreement with China.

Around 200 protesters -- mostly young students -- broke through security barriers and took over parliament's main chamber on Tuesday night, the first such occupation of the building in the island's history.

Britain announced Wednesday it was ditching the £1 coin it has used for the past three decades and replacing it with a 12-sided piece that will be harder to fake.

The Treasury says the new coin, made of two metals in two different colors and modeled on the old Threepenny bit, will be "the most secure coin in circulation in the world".

Porsche, the German maker of luxury sports cars, said Wednesday it is recalling all 911 GT3 models built this year due to risk of possible engine fire.

Porsche said in a statement that it will replace the engines of all 785 of the high-priced 911 GT3 sports cars built in 2014.

There's London. And then there's the rest of the U.K.

A tale of two Britains has increasingly emerged since the Great Recession. While the government trumpets the country's recovery from the financial crisis and its status as the world's fastest-growing developed economy, the rhetoric hides an increasing divide: One that pits London's boom against the malaise in cities such as Manchester and Birmingham that are struggling to remain vibrant in the 21st century.

Syria has suffered damage estimated at $31 billion as a result of its three-year civil war, Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi has said, a figure nearly equivalent to its GDP.

"The damage caused by the war in Syria stands at 4.7 trillion Syrian pounds," or $31.3 billion dollars (22.5 billion euros), Halqi told the ruling party's Al-Baath newspaper.

The Philippines will have to downgrade its target to reduce poverty, officials warned Tuesday, a move which would leave an additional four million people virtually destitute in 2016.

Socio-economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said that although economic growth had remained strong, it had failed to lift as many people out of poverty as expected.

The Spanish government expects first quarter growth to "at least" match the 0.2 percent expansion posted in the final quarter of 2013, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said Tuesday.

Spain will post its third successive quarter of economic expansion in the January-March period "with growth which we expect will be at least the same as that which we had in the final quarter of last year," he told a business forum in Madrid.

Vietnam's central bank on Tuesday cut its key interest rates for the first time in nearly a year in an attempt to kick-start the nation's sluggish economy.

The State Bank of Vietnam cut the refinancing rate -- charged on loans to commercial banks -- to 6.5 percent from seven percent.

Iceland's currency, the krona, was declared "dead" five years ago but it survived and with European Union membership ruled out for the forseeable future it is likely to limp on.

"The krona is dead. We need a new currency. The only serious option is the euro," an Icelandic official told the British newspaper The Guardian in January 2009.