An association of South Korea shopowners Monday urged millions of its members to boycott Japanese goods in protest at Japan's continued claim to a tiny set of islets at the heart of a decades-old dispute.

The Small Local Sales Alliance called on its members, including neighborhood mini-marts, restaurants, pubs, and other stores, to stop selling Japanese goods including cigarettes, liquor and beer, its spokesman told Agence France Presse.

China's manufacturing growth hit a four-month low in February but remained positive, British banking giant HSBC said Monday, noting that the world's second-biggest economy was still recovering slowly.

The bank's seasonally adjusted preliminary purchasing managers' index (PMI) stood at 50.4 for the month, down from a final 52.3 in January, it said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of protesters rallied across Bulgaria on Sunday to denounce poor living standards and corruption plaguing the country, just days after the right-wing government was forced to resign.

More than 10,000 protesters marched in downtown Sofia under the slogan "End to illusions, civil action every day!"

U.S. President Barack Obama urged Congress Saturday to stop automatic spending cuts threatening thousands of American jobs looming at the beginning of next month.

Instead, he argued in his weekly radio and Internet address, they should implement "smart" deficit reduction to help maintain U.S. economic growth.

Moody's stripped Britain of its triple-A debt rating Friday, saying government debt was still mounting and that growth was too weak to reverse the trend before 2016.

In an expected rebuff to the Cameron government's hopes that sharp spending cuts would both reduce its deficit and give growth a boost, the rating agency cut Britain's grade by one notch to Aa1.

Energy consumption by China, the world's leading emitter of C02, rose 3.9 percent in 2012 from the previous year but fell by 3.6 percent per unit of gross domestic product, the government said.

The country used the equivalent of 3.62 billion tonnes of coal, the National Bureaus of Statistics reported in a paper on the state of the economy published Friday.

France's public deficit is set to be worse than expected in 2013 and 2014, veering up to 3.7 percent of output this year and 3.9 percent next year, the European Commission said on Friday.

The figure for this year, when France was due to get back within the EU's ceiling of 3.0 percent of output, is worse than the 3.5 percent previously tipped, and leaves Socialist President Francois Hollande looking for special leeway from Brussels.

World stocks mostly rebounded Friday from two days of doldrums sparked by fears the Federal Reserve would withdraw monetary stimulus. European markets were helped by a better-than-expected German business confidence survey.

The Asian heavyweight, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index, opened down but recovered to gain 0.7 percent to 11,385.94. In the region's biggest economy, China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.5 percent to 2,314.15.

German business confidence rose to the highest level for 10 months in February, data showed on Friday, amid growing optimism that Europe's top economy has put the worst of the eurozone debt crisis behind it.

The Ifo institute's closely watched business climate index for Europe's top economy rose to 107.4 points in February -- the highest reading since April 2012 -- from 104.3 points a month earlier.

United Airlines said Thursday it expected to keep its six Boeing 787s out of service until at least May 12, as the cutting-edge airplane remained grounded worldwide due to battery problems.

United, the only U.S. airline with the 787 Dreamliner, just two days ago announced it would keep them on the ground through March 30.