France said Tuesday it will call on the European Commission to suspend negotiations on a massive trade deal between the European Union and the United States, which it complained are unfairly weighted in favor of the Americans.

"There is no more political support in France for these negotiations" and "France calls for an end to these negotiations," the country's junior minister for trade Matthias Fekl told RMC radio.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in India on Monday for talks on ambitious plans to hike trade between the world's two largest democracies five-fold to around $100 billion.  

Egypt's parliament on Monday passed a law on value added tax, one of the reforms promised in exchange for a $12 billion loan agreed with the International Monetary Fund, lawmakers said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for improved worker rights in Bangladesh following the collapse of a garment factory complex and other disasters that have claimed more than 1,200 lives.

Chinese authorities have shut down scores of factories and ordered a mandatory holiday for workers ahead of a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 economic powers, authorities said.

Japanese stocks rallied on a weaker yen but other Asian markets retreated Monday after Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen hinted at a U.S. interest rate hike by the end of the year.

Germany's vice chancellor and economy minister Sigmar Gabriel said Sunday that negotiations on a massive trade between the European Union and the United States were effectively dead in the water.

The U.N. on Sunday urged African nations to close a gender gap that is costing an estimated $95 billion (84 billion euros) a year in lost economic potential.

Shoddy, price-cutting renovations, in breach of local building regulations, could be partly to blame for the high death toll from this week's devastating earthquake in central Italy, according to a prosecutor investigating the disaster.

Four months after taking the helm of struggling Russian automobile giant Avtovaz, Renault executive Nicolas Maure has set his sights on returning the Lada maker to profit by 2018.