The United States pressed China Saturday to make progress on its recently announced currency reform to make the yuan more flexible, calling it key to healthy global economic growth.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that despite global trade imbalances being lower than levels before the 2008 financial crisis, further action was needed to guard against renewed unsustainable imbalances.

Gas-rich Qatar has bought three percent of French energy giant Total, a move welcomed by the company's chief executive Christophe de Margerie, a Qatari daily reported on Saturday.

If confirmed, this would be the first time Total has confirmed that Qatar has raised its stake in the company.

Iraq's second of five floating Gulf oil terminals came online on Friday, adding 900,000 barrels per day to the country's export capacity, the head of the Southern Oil Company said.

"A ship with a capacity of 2 million barrels of oil has docked at the second floating oil terminal," and pumping has begun, Dhia al-Mussawi told a news conference in Basra.

Japanese auto giant Nissan said Friday it would build two models of its luxury Infiniti brand in China from 2014, as it looks to further tap the world's biggest car market.

The firm has said it is aiming to boost sales of the cars to half a million units globally by 2016, up from 145,000 last year when it was produced in Japan and the United States.

China and the BRICS emerging economies are set to flex their muscles as the top finance officials of the G20 and the IMF meet Friday seeking to raise $400 billion to prevent financial contagion.

Having already rolled back the goal for new crisis intervention funds from $500 billion, the International Monetary Fund remained some $80 billion short going into Friday's meetings in Washington.

The European Commission approved Thursday a takeover of the U.S. surgical equipment company Synthes by pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson in exchange for J&Js divestment of other units.

The acquisition was said to be worth around $21.3 billion or 16.2 billion euros.

Ford Motor Co. plans to build a $760 million auto assembly plant in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, part of a doubling of its production capacity in the world's biggest vehicle market as it strives to catch up with rivals.

The investment in the factory with joint-venture partner Changan Ford Mazda Automobile Limited will add annual capacity of 250,000 vehicles when it begins operations in early 2015, the company said Thursday.

Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Ghassemi said on Thursday that oil sales to Germany, Greece and Spain had not been halted as reported by state media last week.

"We are still selling oil to all of Europe except Britain and France," Ghassemi told a press conference.

Arab countries are wasting tens of billions of dollars on subsidies for petrol and energy but dare not roll them back for fear of a political backlash, a U.N. report said.

The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) report this week said six of the world's 10 biggest subsidizers are in the Arab world, led by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. People in the three countries pay less than a third of world prices for car fuel and electricity.

The World Bank and the African Development Bank have suspended development programs in Guinea-Bissau to protest an April 12 army coup that ousted the government.

The two organizations said they joined the African Union and the ECOWAS regional bloc in "condemning the military coup in Guinea-Bissau, urging a speedy resolution of the crisis, and calling for the restoration of constitutional government to preserve the development gains of the country."