Lawmakers have one final day to try to prevent the first U.S. government shutdown in 17 years, but a deal appeared remote Monday as congressional leaders showed little intent to compromise.

With Congress going into crunch sessions ahead of an 11:59 pm (0359 GMT Tuesday) deadline, a House Republican leader offered a glimmer of hope when he hinted that his party could offer a new plan that might pass muster in the Democratic-held Senate.

The Reserve Bank of Australia on Monday admitted staff from a subsidiary visited Iraq at the height of U.N. sanctions after it was accused of attempting to strike an illegal deal with Saddam Hussein.

A joint investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media said secret files showed officials from the central bank's scandal-hit Note Printing Australia (NPA) went to Iraq to discuss a contract to turn the country's paper currency into polymer notes.

China launched a free trade zone in its commercial hub Shanghai on Sunday, state-media reported, with the project seen as a testing ground for much-needed reforms in the world's second largest economy.

The zone, which covers 29 square kilometers (11 square miles), "started operating Sunday", the official Xinhua news agency said, adding that it was "a test bed for the Chinese leadership's drive of deepening market-oriented reforms and boosting economic vigor".

Algerians demanding work protested across the energy-rich North African nation on Saturday as organizers vowed more days of "rage".

Despite its vast hydrocarbon wealth, Algeria is plagued by high unemployment affecting 21.5 percent of those under 35, according to state and International Monetary Fund estimates.

At a time when Indian, Russian and Brazilian car markets are stumbling, China remains the major growth engine for the global automotive industry, analysts say.

"For many years it's been the Bric nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) which have accounted for the growth of global sales, taking over from the more mature markets," explains Carlos da Silva, an analyst at IHS Automotive.

The World Bank removed Iran from its list of deadbeat borrowers Friday, saying the Islamic Republic had paid outstanding loan amounts.

The Bank said that its key lending unit, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, "has moved all loans to the Islamic Republic of Iran from non-performing status to performing status following the payment of all overdue amounts on these loans."

Until three months ago, petrol smuggling literally drove Morocco's neglected eastern region, where the subsidised liquid smuggled in from Algeria fuelled the local economy.

But in June, Algiers took drastic measures to curtail the illegal trade, clamping down on traffic across its border with Morocco, which has officially been closed since 1994.

Portuguese voters head to the polls on Sunday for municipal elections which offer them their first chance to express at the ballot box their view of the government's austerity program.

"Portugal is going through a very tricky time," said political analyst Jose Antonio Passos Palmeira.

The U.S. military's nearly 1.4 million troops will stay on the job in the case of a government shutdown but not get paid, Pentagon officials said Friday.

The war effort in Afghanistan and other high-priority missions would not be affected but most training and a range of maintenance work would be cancelled if Congress fails to agree a new budget measure by the close of the fiscal year on Monday, September 30, top officials said.

Following a week of divisive debate, the U.S. Senate passed a temporary budget Friday, sending the legislation to the House amid a congressional showdown just days from a possible government closure.

House Speaker John Boehner has indicated his Republican caucus would likely alter the legislation and send it back to the Senate, a move that could leave insufficient time for an amended bill to pass both chambers of Congress before a fiscal year-end deadline of midnight Monday.