Israel has held new talks with the Palestinians over the development of a gas field off the coast of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli foreign ministry said in a new report released on Sunday.

The report, prepared for submission to a New York gathering of donors to the Palestinian Authority, describes meetings and initial negotiations between the two sides on the thorny subject of the development of the Gaza Marine gas field.

Efforts to create a Palestinian state could collapse unless emergency funds are found to bail out its nascent government, the Palestinian finance minister Sunday.

The Palestinian Authority faces a $400 million shortfall this year and has already been hit by protests over the spiralling cost of living and spending cuts by president Mahmud Abbas's administration.

Oil prices eased in Asian trade Monday, weighed down by a fall in regional equities and on lingering concerns over the eurozone debt crisis, analysts said.

New York's benchmark contract, West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery, was down 68 cents to $92.21 in the afternoon, while Brent North Sea crude for November dipped 84 cents to $110.58.

General Motors is recalling nearly 474,000 Saturn, Chevrolet and Pontiac sedans in the United States, Canada and elsewhere to fix a transmission problem that could allow the cars to move when in "park," the company said Friday.

GM told the National Highway Safety Transportation Division that tabs on the transmission cable in the cars can fracture and separate.

Morocco and the Ivory Coast on Friday signed an agreement on the exchange of information in the fight against money laundering and "financing terrorism," the official MAP news agency reported.

The accord was signed by Morocco's Financial Data Processing Unit (UTRF) and CENTIF-CI, the Ivory Coast finance ministry's unit for financial information, the agency said.

A Spanish cry for a full sovereign bailout, seen as a racing certainty over the summer, faces newly-expressed opposition from Germany even as EU officials lay the groundwork should one be judged necessary in Madrid.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Friday that Spain did not need a further aid programme on top of promised loans to recapitalise its banking sector, but that Madrid was suffering from a lack of confidence on the financial markets.

The 'troika' of international creditors called time out Friday on lengthy bailout negotiations with the Greek government, pending further consultations.

"The discussions since the beginning of September have been very intense," Simon O'Connor, spokesman for EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told a regular news conference, saying negotiators were "leaving this weekend" and "returning in about a week.

Italy slashed its economic growth forecasts on Thursday saying it was now expecting contractions of 2.4 percent for 2012 and 0.2 percent for 2013 due to "a deterioration in the international environment."

The government had previously forecast a shrinkage of 1.2 percent in 2012 and an expansion of 0.5 percent in 2013 in a report released in April.

Spain needs less money for recapitalizing its banks than widely believed, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Thursday.

"The number is lower than what was feared initially by the European and by the Spaniards," Lagarde told the Journal.

The World Bank said Thursday that it could reconsider its decision to cancel a $1.2 billion loan to Bangladesh for a major road and rail bridge, but only if authorities keep pledges to fight corruption.

In late June, the Washington-based lender cancelled its planned financing for the $3 billion Padma bridge project, saying the government in Dhaka had not cooperated in investigating "high-level" corruption in the project.