France's rush to tax nationals who inherit from Swiss residents will backfire by spurring many wealthy Frenchmen to move to Switzerland, taking their tax euros with them, observers say.

France "has shot itself in the foot, several times," Claudine Schmid, a French parliamentarian of the rightwing UMP party, told Agence France Presse Monday.

Mini versions of Richard Wagner's best-known works are on offer in Bayreuth this year for those who baulk at the prospect of sitting through operas lasting five hours and more.

While Wagnerians from all over the world traipse up to Festspielhaus theatre built to the composer's own designs on the town's Green Hill, children and opera novices can get a taste for his music in slimmed-down arrangements of two of his greatest masterpieces.

Organised crime is so big globally that were it a country, it would be part of the G20 group of major economies, the Australian government said Tuesday.

Releasing the Australian Crime Commission's biennial report on the issue, Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said organised crime had boomed and grown more complex with the advent of the Internet.

A senior Iranian official announced the country has ordered 315 subway cars from China in place of payment for oil that can't be transferred due to sanctions.

Amir Jafarpour, who is deputy head of the Transportation and Fuel Management Committee, said officials were forced to order the coaches because billions of dollars of payments from crude oil exports to China have not been transferred to Iran because of sanctions.

Saudi Arabia has granted three foreign consortiums contracts worth $22.5 billion (16.9 billion euros) to build a Riyadh metro, the kingdom announced at a news conference in the capital late Sunday.

The consortiums are led by U.S., Spanish and Italian firms.

Kuwait telecom giant Zain's net profits dived 14.0 percent in the second quarter of 2013, the company said on Monday, blaming currency fluctuations from its unit in Sudan.

The company posted a net profit of 70.9 million dinars ($248.8 million) in the April to June period of 2013, compared to 61 million ($214 million) in the corresponding period of last year, a statement said.

Essilor, the world's biggest maker of corrective eye lenses, on Monday said it has signed a deal to buy US group Transitions Optical and Italian manufacturer Intercast, for $1.73 billion (1.30 billion euros).

Transitions Optical posted sales of $814 million in 2012 and is a specialist in photochromic lenses, which darken automatically when exposed to certain types of light.

Saudi billionaire prince Alwaleed bin Talal has warned global demand for the kingdom's oil is dropping, urging revenue diversification and investment in nuclear and solar energy to cover local consumption.

In letters to officials and published on Sunday on his Twitter account, King Abdullah's nephew warned that it was alarming that "92 percent of the government budget relies on oil".

Loans to businesses in recession-hit Italy dropped by 4.2 percent over the past year, with small companies in particular suffering from difficulties in obtaining credit and unpaid state bills, a new report warned Saturday.

Between May 2012 and May 2013, total bank loans dropped by 41.5 billion euros ($55 billion), or 4.2 percent, small business association Confartigianato said.

The European Commission said Saturday it has reached an "amicable solution" with Beijing over imports of Chinese solar panels, a dispute that had threatened to turn into a full-blown trade war.

"We found an amicable solution in the EU-China solar panels case that will lead to a new market equilibrium at sustainable prices," EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in a statement.