U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew kept up the pressure on Japan Saturday not to devalue its currency after repeated threats by Tokyo to intervene in forex markets to tame a resurgent yen.

The warning came in talks on the sidelines of a G7 meeting where Japan's actions have set it on a collision course with its counterparts, including the United States and Germany, which have ruled out such moves.

Brazil's projected budget deficit for this year will be nearly twice as big as forecast when Dilma Rousseff was president, the new finance minister said Friday.

Rousseff's government vastly overestimated tax revenues from an economy in deep recession, minister Henrique Meirelles told a press conference.

Tourists flocking to the French capital will now be able shop at luxury shops that line the Champs Elysees and the Place Vendome on Sundays as a key government reform comes into effect.

An agreement between luxury shops and employee unions on Sunday hours has come into force, said Sylvie Zawadzki, who heads up tax and social issues at the French Fashion Federation.

Egypt's latest air disaster is another crushing blow to a country whose tourism-dependent economy is struggling to recover from years of jihadist attacks and political turmoil, analysts said.

Brazil's acting president Michel Temer on Thursday named a new chairman for the scandal-tainted state oil company Petrobras.

The new boss is Pedro Parente, a former government minister and until now chairman of Bunge, a big agribusiness and food company.

Papua New Guinea explorer Oil Search Friday said it had bought rival InterOil in a multi-billion-dollar deal, but will sell off some of the assets to French energy giant Total to fund part of the takeover.

Oil Search is to pay US$40.25 per share for the US-listed company for a total value of approximately $2.2 billion, as it looks to boost its interests in a key liquefied natural gas (LNG) project under development in resource-rich Papua New Guinea.

The World Bank has approved $130 million worth of new loans for Cambodia, ending a five-year freeze in new lending to the country following a spate of controversial forced evictions by the government.

The decision will be welcome news to strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen whose government has clashed with the World Bank over the eviction of thousands of families from the shores of a lake in the capital Phnom Penh.

The IMF said Thursday that Greece would need a lengthy period free from debt payments to achieve sustainable finances if the European Union does not agree to cutting the debt up front.

"It is possible to restore debt sustainability without upfront haircuts, although this would involve providing very concessional loan terms including long grace and maturity periods and very low interest rates," IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted Thursday that the Russian economy would contract by about 1.5 percent this year before experiencing moderate growth in 2017.

Israel is expected to finally ratify a deal to put a major offshore gas field online, the energy ministry announced, after a compromise was reached with the U.S.-led consortium of developers.

The supreme court in March struck down a complex agreement on development of the Leviathan gas field, off Israel's Mediterranean coast, with justices objecting to a clause that guaranteed the terms of the deal would not change for a decade.