American lawmakers averted a feared government shutdown by approving a stopgap spending bill, but heated debate over future federal spending took shape as they clashed over budget plans.

A trio of key votes bookended the action in Congress Wednesday ahead of a two-week congressional recess, the most urgent one being on the so-called continuing resolution, a $1.2 trillion appropriations measure that will keep the doors of federal agencies open through September, the end of the fiscal year.

Iraq's oil exports, which account for the lion's share of government income, rebounded in February after a two-month lull, figures published by the oil ministry showed on Thursday.

Iraq exported 71 million barrels of oil in February, or about 2.54 million barrels per day (bpd), up from around 2.36 million bpd the previous month, according to data published on the website of Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation on Wednesday.

The newly installed governor of Japan's central bank said Thursday that he plans to do whatever he can to end deflation and break the economy out of the doldrums.

After a meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Haruhiko Kuroda told reporters he had reiterated his pledge to "do everything we can to get the economy out of deflation."

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday slammed current European proposals to solve the Cyprus crisis as absurd, while Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis Sarris was set to hold further talks in Moscow over aid.

At the opening of a conference in Moscow with the head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, Medvedev slammed the European strategy to bail out the near-bankrupt eurozone member.

A bill to avert a U.S. government shutdown has won passage from a divided U.S. Senate after lawmakers cut deals on amendments, setting the stage for the president to sign it this week.

It also cleared the way for key debate on the 2014 budget.

Banks in debt-hit Cyprus will stay closed until at least Tuesday, a Central Bank official told Agence France Presse, after the authority issued a decree stating banks will not open their doors on Thursday and Friday.

With Monday a scheduled bank holiday, the official said there was no prospect of banking resuming before Tuesday.

The Syrian government said on Wednesday it was working on a plan to prop the ailing pound, which has lost more than 120 percent of its value against the dollar since the beginning of the civil war two years ago.

"There is a government plan and measures will be taken to compensate for the fall of the pound against foreign currencies," official media quoted Syria's central bank governor Adib Mayale as saying.

French police on Wednesday raided the Paris home of IMF chief Christine Lagarde in connection with a probe into her handling of a high-profile scandal when she was a government minister.

The investigation concerns Lagarde's 2007 decision to ask an arbitration panel to rule on a dispute between disgraced tycoon Bernard Tapie and the collapsed bank Credit Lyonnais.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi said Wednesday he hoped his country can join major emerging market peers in the BRICS group as he pitched for Indian investment in his country's troubled economy.

Egypt has been battling to restore investor confidence, which has suffered a sharp downturn since the "Arab Spring" uprising that overthrew authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis Sarris will seek Russian assistance on Wednesday after his island's parliament rejected the terms of an EU-IMF bailout that slapped an unprecedented levy on bank accounts.

Sarris will meet his Russian counterpart Anton Siluanov in the hope of easing the terms and winning an extension of a 2.5-billion-euro loan that Moscow afforded Nicosia in 2011.