President Dilma Rousseff urged businesses Sunday to expand their investments as Brazil cuts energy costs, in a bid to curb poverty and improve flagging industrial competitiveness.

"Our recipe for a stronger Brazil is to invest in overcoming poverty, guaranteeing home ownership, expanding employment, increasing education opportunities and improving our infrastructure and the competitiveness of our companies," Rousseff said in a Christmas broadcast to the nation.

Japan's new envoy to China urged stronger economic ties with Beijing in an interview broadcast Monday, after the incoming premier pledged to mend bilateral ties strained by a bitter territorial row.

Ties between Asia's two biggest economies have become increasingly strained over a disputed island chain -- the Tokyo-controlled Senkakus, which Beijing calls the Diaoyus -- with neither side willing to budge after months of wrangling.

Prime Minister David Cameron said 2012 has been an "extraordinary year" for Britain in which the country "showed the world what we're made of" with the London Games and Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee.

In his Christmas message, Cameron said the festivities were a good time to look back on the past 12 months.

Vietnam on Monday cut its key interest rates for the sixth time in 2012 in an attempt to boost an economy growing at the weakest pace in more than a decade.

The move comes as the communist-run economy struggles in the face of domestic banking sector turmoil, falling foreign direct investment and deepening financial troubles among state-owned companies.

Iran is engaged in a "smart economic war" with Western powers whose sanctions against its nuclear program are hurting some Iranians, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday.

"Targeted sanctions, which the enemies say are supposed to be crippling, have led to a drop in our oil" sales, Ahmadinejad said in a live interview on state television, referring to an oil embargo imposed by the European Union.

The U.S. industrial group General Electric said on Friday that it would buy the aviation activities of Italian engine maker Avio for $4.3 billion (3.3 billion euros), while Avio's space unit will stay with the company's present owners, the investment fund Cinven and aerospace company Finmeccanica.

A GE statement said that the acquisition would bolster its position in jet propulsion, and "will strengthen GE’s global supply chain capabilities as its engine production rates continue to rise to meet growing customer demand."

The IMF said Friday that France's growth outlook "remains fragile" and warned that it would probably miss its target of reducing its public deficit to three percent next year.

"Growth remains sluggish and the near-term outlook is subject to downside risks," it said, saying France's 2013 deficit would not fall below 3.5 percent, while growth will fall from 1.7 percent in 2011 to 0.2 percent in 2012.

The World Bank's arbitration unit has agreed to hear a complaint by Spanish oil firm Repsol over Argentina's expropriation of the company's former energy affiliate YPF.

On its website, the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes simply indicated that it had begun the arbitration process on Tuesday and the tribunal was "not yet constituted." Repsol filed its complaint two weeks ago.

Democrat and Republican lawmakers mulled their next move Saturday after leaving Washington for the Christmas holidays without reaching agreement on averting a year-end fiscal crisis that threatens Americans with stiff tax hikes and drastic budget cuts.

On Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama urged lawmakers to pass a scaled-down tax package to avert the so-call fiscal cliff.

The United States on Friday sanctioned four Iranian companies, including one accused of providing weapons to the Syrian regime's crackdown.

The Treasury Department said SAD Import Export Company shipped weapons to the Syrian Armed Forces on behalf of Iran's Defense Industries Organization, which it accused of being used by the government to "assist" the Syrian regime's crackdown.