Singapore state investment giant Temasek and Chinese oil group Sinopec aim to snap up a multi-billion-euro stake in Spain's Gas Natural, the Financial Times said Monday.

The two groups had contacted Spanish oil firm Repsol separately to say they were interested in buying its 4.7-billion-euro ($6.4 billion) stake in Gas Natural, the paper said, citing people close to the process.

The World Bank on Monday lowered its 2013 growth forecast for East Asian developing countries to 7.1 percent and warned that a prolonged U.S. fiscal crisis could be damaging to the region.

The estimate for this year's gross domestic product (GDP) growth is down from a forecast of 7.8 percent in April, and lower than the 7.5 percent growth recorded in 2012 and 8.3 percent in 2011.

The developing countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China recovered quickly from the financial crisis five years ago. Their spending helped keep a global recession from becoming a global depression.

Now they're stumbling.

Asian markets were weaker Monday after heated political rhetoric from the U.S. raised worries that the partial shutdown of the American government could bring the world's largest economy close to defaulting on its debt.

Japan's Nikkei index, the regional heavyweight, slumped by 0.8 percent to 13,915.90. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index dipped 0.7 percent to 22,985.36. Losses weren't as steep on South Korea's Kospi, which fell less than 0.1 percent to 1,994.97.

The House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill Saturday that would assure retroactive pay to more than 800,000 federal workers furloughed during the current U.S. government shutdown.

Bitterly-divided lawmakers used a rare weekend legislative session to unite on the issue, the first significant coming together amid a federal work stop that has entered its fifth day, with no end in sight.

Bank of Cyprus and six former executives were fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday for failing to inform shareholders over the risk of its Greek bond purchases.

The island's largest lender was fined 160,000 euros ($218,000) for non-disclosure on its high-risk junk-rated Greek bond buys to the tune of 2.4 billion euros in 2010.

President Barack Obama on Saturday called on the lower chamber of Congress to "stop this farce" and end the U.S. government shutdown by unconditionally approving a federal budget.

"Take that vote. Stop this farce. End this shutdown now," Obama said in his weekly radio and video address.

After almost six years of waiting, Brazil's energy giant Petrobras is readying a major auction this month of its deep-water "pre-salt" oil reserves, despite fears of excessive state meddling.

The October 21 Libra oil field auction in Rio de Janeiro -- which experts say could put 12 billion barrels of oil up for grabs -- has been highly anticipated as the start of the sell-off of the total deep-water reserves.

The personal fortune of Twitter co-founder Evan Williams probably will take up 10 characters once the online communications company goes public.

Williams, who was Twitter's CEO for two years until Dick Costolo took over in 2010, owns a 12 percent stake that makes him the company's largest shareholder. If Twitter turns out to be worth at least $17.60 per share, the initial public offering will make Williams a billionaire at 41 years old.

The second round of scheduled talks between top European Union and American officials to clinch the world's largest trade deal have been cancelled because of the U.S. government shutdown.

The discussions were meant to start on Monday but European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman had said Washington would be unable to send its delegation.