A bill to avert a U.S. government shutdown has won passage from a divided U.S. Senate after lawmakers cut deals on amendments, setting the stage for the president to sign it this week.

It also cleared the way for key debate on the 2014 budget.

Banks in debt-hit Cyprus will stay closed until at least Tuesday, a Central Bank official told Agence France Presse, after the authority issued a decree stating banks will not open their doors on Thursday and Friday.

With Monday a scheduled bank holiday, the official said there was no prospect of banking resuming before Tuesday.

The Syrian government said on Wednesday it was working on a plan to prop the ailing pound, which has lost more than 120 percent of its value against the dollar since the beginning of the civil war two years ago.

"There is a government plan and measures will be taken to compensate for the fall of the pound against foreign currencies," official media quoted Syria's central bank governor Adib Mayale as saying.

French police on Wednesday raided the Paris home of IMF chief Christine Lagarde in connection with a probe into her handling of a high-profile scandal when she was a government minister.

The investigation concerns Lagarde's 2007 decision to ask an arbitration panel to rule on a dispute between disgraced tycoon Bernard Tapie and the collapsed bank Credit Lyonnais.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi said Wednesday he hoped his country can join major emerging market peers in the BRICS group as he pitched for Indian investment in his country's troubled economy.

Egypt has been battling to restore investor confidence, which has suffered a sharp downturn since the "Arab Spring" uprising that overthrew authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis Sarris will seek Russian assistance on Wednesday after his island's parliament rejected the terms of an EU-IMF bailout that slapped an unprecedented levy on bank accounts.

Sarris will meet his Russian counterpart Anton Siluanov in the hope of easing the terms and winning an extension of a 2.5-billion-euro loan that Moscow afforded Nicosia in 2011.

Britain's government was Wednesday set to unveil plans to grow the country's recession-threatened economy, despite insisting on greater state savings as it struggles to meet its deficit-reduction target.

Finance minister George Osborne unveils his latest tax and spending plans in an annual budget likely to stick firmly to the coalition government's austerity drive, even though the country's economy is sailing close to another recession.

Russians are snapping up luxury villas surrounded by lush vegetation along Spain's rugged Mediterranean coast, drawn by a mild climate and relaxed lifestyle, proving the country's ailing economy with a much-needed boost.

Sergei Maslov, 53-year-old real estate developer, and his wife Larissa, 51, from Novosibirsk in Siberia are part of this wave of Russian investors with deep pockets who are being welcomed with open arms by Spanish officials.

Kuwait, where expats make up 68 percent of the population, plans to reduce the number of foreigners living in the Gulf state by one million over the next decade, a minister said on Tuesday.

"The ministry will take decisions and measures... aimed at reducing the number of expatriate workers by 100,000 every year for 10 years to reach one million," Social Affairs and Labor Minister Thekra al-Rasheedi told the official KUNA news agency.

Britain sent a Royal Air Force plane to crisis-hit Cyprus on Tuesday carrying one million euros ($1.3 million) in emergency loans for British military personnel, the defense ministry said.

The cash cargo flight was a "contingency" plan in case banks in Cyprus stopped giving out money as the island deals with the fallout from a controversial eurozone bailout deal, a spokesman said.