The world's biggest air show takes to the skies on Monday, with a battle between Boeing and Airbus for orders in the lucrative market for wide-body planes set to dominate the Paris event.

European manufacturer Airbus managed to steal a march on its American rival before the show -- at Le Bourget just north of Paris -- with a successful maiden flight of its new A350 long-haul plane.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says leaders gathering Monday for the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland should reach speedy agreement on trade and tax reforms, and draw inspiration from the host country's ability to resolve its own stubborn conflict.

Speaking hours ahead of the summit's official opening at a lakeside golf resort, Cameron said he expects formal agreement to launch negotiations on a European-American free trade agreement. He said a pact to slash tariffs on exports would boost employment and growth on both sides of the Atlantic.

Shares of India's private carrier Jet Airways slumped nearly 12.3 percent Monday morning, after authorities last week delayed approval for Abu Dhabi-based airline Etihad to acquire a stake.

Jet shares fell as much as 12.27 percent to a low of 411.6 rupees at the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The Israeli and Palestinian finance ministers were meeting on Sunday for talks aimed at resuming economic contacts suspended by Israel last year, both sides said.

The meeting between newly-appointed Palestinian minister Shukri Bishara and Israel's Yair Lapid, who took office in March, was scheduled for 3.00 pm (1200 GMT), the Palestinian finance ministry said.

The International Monetary Fund assailed U.S. government spending cuts as "excessively rapid and ill-designed" on Friday as it cut the economy's growth forecast for 2014.

Warning that the country still faces downside risks to its recovery, the IMF cheered the Federal Reserve's stimulus efforts and urged Congress to help firm up growth by repealing the severe "sequester" budget cuts.

EU trade ministers finally thrashed out a deal Friday on how to negotiate for a free trade deal with the United States, after meeting a French demand to exclude the key audiovisual sector.

After some 13 hours of talks, ministers had reached what one EU source described as a "not in, not out" formula.

A massive database of private offshore banking entities that could be used for tax evasion was posted online for public use Friday by the muckraking group that first reported the files.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said anyone can now search the records of some 100,000 companies, trusts and funds located in leading tax havens to see who could be making use of them to skirt home-country taxes.

The head of Europe's bailout fund says the region should eventually aim to do without help from the International Monetary Fund.

Klaus Regling's comments in Friday's edition of Germany's daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung add to recent hints from other European policymakers that the bloc should aim to handle future emergencies on its own.

Moody's credit rating agency put debt issued by Bahrain on watch on Friday, warning of a possible downgrade because the country could face strains over its debt given the weak outlook for oil prices.

Bahrain is a Gulf oil-producing country, but Moody's warned that it could be entering a period of making a loss on every barrel of oil produced.

The Vatican bank is taking a "zero tolerance" approach to suspect transactions, says its new chief executive Ernst von Freyberg, as it fights hard to shatter a culture of silence and shed its murky image.

The 54-year-old German lawyer, who took over at the helm of the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) in February, said in an interview with Agence France Presse that he is giving it his all to disperse the clouds hanging over the bank.