Egypt on Sunday signed an accord with the Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank for $1 billion in funding for the purchase of energy and food products.

State news agency MENA said the deal was signed by International Cooperation Minister Faiza Abul Naga and an affiliate of the IDB, but the mechanism of the financing was not specified.

Italy's Fiat Industrial will close five European plants of its truck subsidiary Iveco before year end to concentrate production at one German site, the firm's director told the Ansa news agency Sunday.

According to Alfredo Altavilla, plants in France's Chambery, Austria's Graz and Germany's Weisweill, Goerlitz and Ulm will close.

The chairman of Barclays Bank will on Monday step down after the group was fined for attempting to manipulate the inter-bank lending rate, British media reported.

Marcus Agius will announce that he is to leave his post in the face of public and political fury over the bank's efforts to distort the rate at which banks lend to each other, according to the BBC.

China's manufacturing activity contracted for the eighth consecutive month in June, British bank HSBC said Monday, which analysts say will prompt more government moves to boost the flagging economy.

The bank's purchasing managers' index (PMI) for China, which gauges the manufacturing sector, fell to 48.2 in June from 48.4 in May, according to an HSBC statement.

The Israeli government on Sunday voted to go ahead with plans to raise the 2013 budget deficit target to three percent of GDP, despite objections from the governor of the central bank.

The weekly cabinet meeting agreed to seek to fast-track the plan through parliament with a view to passing it into law as early as possible, the government said in a statement.

The Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank is facing its "worst financial crisis" since its 1994 establishment, the Palestinian labor minister told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

Ahmed Majdalani warned that a shortfall in the delivery of aid from Arab donor nations means the PA will be unable to pay employees their July salaries or pay off debts it owes to private businesses across the West Bank.

A European Union embargo on Iranian oil went into effect on Sunday, provoking anger in Tehran which says the measure will hurt talks with world powers over its sensitive nuclear activities.

Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi sought to downplay the embargo as just the latest punishment in decades of ineffective sanctions.

Sanctions-hit Iran on Saturday called for OPEC to hold an extraordinary meeting to rein in output going over its agreed total quota because oil prices have dipped to a "critical level" under $100 a barrel.

"We have asked the secretary general to set up an extraordinary meeting as prices have become irrational," Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi was quoted as saying on his ministry's official news website Shana.

Toyota on Friday added two models to a controversial 2009 recall launched after floor mats became trapped under the accelerator and were linked to dozens of deaths.

Toyota's mishandling of the initial problem and other reports of sudden, unintended acceleration led to the recall of more than 12 million vehicles worldwide, a U.S. congressional probe, more than $50 million in fines from U.S. regulators and public apologies by its chief.

The World Bank on Friday cancelled a $1.2 billion loan for Bangladesh's Padma bridge project, saying the government had not cooperated in investigating "high level" corruption in the project.

"The World Bank cannot, should not, and will not turn a blind eye to evidence of corruption," it said, announcing the loan was being cancelled immediately.