Until three months ago, petrol smuggling literally drove Morocco's neglected eastern region, where the subsidised liquid smuggled in from Algeria fuelled the local economy.

But in June, Algiers took drastic measures to curtail the illegal trade, clamping down on traffic across its border with Morocco, which has officially been closed since 1994.

Portuguese voters head to the polls on Sunday for municipal elections which offer them their first chance to express at the ballot box their view of the government's austerity program.

"Portugal is going through a very tricky time," said political analyst Jose Antonio Passos Palmeira.

The U.S. military's nearly 1.4 million troops will stay on the job in the case of a government shutdown but not get paid, Pentagon officials said Friday.

The war effort in Afghanistan and other high-priority missions would not be affected but most training and a range of maintenance work would be cancelled if Congress fails to agree a new budget measure by the close of the fiscal year on Monday, September 30, top officials said.

Following a week of divisive debate, the U.S. Senate passed a temporary budget Friday, sending the legislation to the House amid a congressional showdown just days from a possible government closure.

House Speaker John Boehner has indicated his Republican caucus would likely alter the legislation and send it back to the Senate, a move that could leave insufficient time for an amended bill to pass both chambers of Congress before a fiscal year-end deadline of midnight Monday.

The European Union's financial emergency fund released an aid tranche of 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) to Cyprus on Friday, part of a controversial bailout agreed earlier this year.

The release from the European Stability Mechanism was agreed by the 17 finance ministers of the Eurogroup earlier this month after Cyprus had enacted stringent measures in return for the loans.

France exited recession in the second quarter of the year with economic growth of 0.5 percent, updated figures confirmed Friday, but investment shrank, raising concerns the recovery remains fragile.

The rebound for Europe's second-largest economy in the April-June period followed a six-month economic slide -- though revised data released Friday said the gross domestic product (GDP) contraction in the first quarter was 0.1 percent, instead of the 0.2 percent initially announced.

Russia's economy is at a crossroads and the country risks falling into the "abyss" if it does not make serious reforms to boost long-term growth, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Friday.

In a major article for the economic daily Vedomosti, Medvedev sought to reclaim the mantle of a champion of economic reform that he sought when he held the presidency from 2008 to 2012.

Japanese inflation hit a five-year high last month, although Friday's data showed the rise was driven by soaring energy costs, indicating the government's plan to boost consumer demand was still to gain traction.

The consumer price index, which measures a basket of everyday goods but excludes the volatile cost of fresh food, was up 0.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the internal affairs ministry.

Oil prices eased in Asian trade Friday after the United States and Russia agreed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution on destroying Syria's chemical arms, analysts said.

New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate for delivery in November, dipped 32 cents to $102.71 in afternoon trade, while Brent North Sea crude for November was down 13 cents at $109.08.

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