Near-bankrupt national carrier Cyprus Airways said on Tuesday it was in preliminary talks with suitor Middle East Airlines as it undergoes drastic restructuring to stay afloat.

"Middle East Airlines and its representatives had preliminary contacts with company management and the ministry of finance," the carrier said in a statement to the stock exchange.

Syria's Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi inaugurated a new power plant near Damascus on Tuesday, two years into a conflict that has cut power production by half, state news agency SANA reported.

Built at a cost of some $20 million, the 250-megawatt plant is in Qudsaya, northwest of Damascus.

The German parliament will vote Thursday on a bailout plan for debt-mired Cyprus, a deputy from the ruling conservatives said, with the government confident of a clear majority.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble will open the session in the Bundestag lower house with a speech, followed by two separate votes on Cyprus, parliamentary sources said Tuesday.

Italian police on Tuesday seized 1.8 billion euros ($2.3 billion) destined for Nomura and placed the Japanese bank's former CEO Sadeq Sayeed under investigation in a fraud probe over a derivatives deal with troubled Italian lender Monte dei Paschi.

A statement from the prosecutor's office in Siena, the hometown of the Italian bank, said it had ordered the seizure of "a total of around 1.8 billion euros from Nomura International."

South Korea's government announced a $15.3 billion stimulus plan Tuesday to boost slowing growth in Asia's fourth-largest economy.

The stimulus would be South Korea's third-largest supplementary budget ever, exceeded only by those approved after the 1998 Asian financial crisis and the 2008 global financial turmoil when measured as a proportion of gross domestic product.

The International Monetary Fund said Monday that talks on a multi-billion dollar loan to stabilize Egypt's finances had made progress, noting steps taken by Cairo to adjust energy subsidies.

In a statement on the IMF's staff visit to Egypt over the past two weeks, mission chief Andreas Bauer applauded initial moves to adjust policy by the Egyptian government.

Dubai Internet City pledges its support to local talent

After its successful rounds in Beirut, Amman, and Riyadh, the ArabNet Developer Tournament will showcase the UAE’s most talented web and mobile programmers in a series of coding challenges at the Dubai Round on April 20th 2013. The competition, sponsored in the UAE by Du and hosted by Dubai Internet City, seeks to highlight young technical talent across the region and connect them with job opportunities in the growing digital sector. “The ArabNet Developer Tournament will shine the spotlight on the hidden heroes of the digital industry – the developers who build every website we visit and app we use,” stated Omar Christidis, the Founder & CEO of ArabNet.

Greece and its troika of international creditors have reached agreement on its economic recovery efforts, opening the way for the disbursement of 8.8 billion euros ($11.5 billion) in bailout loans, officials said Monday.

The talks under way since March "have wrapped up, we have an agreement," said Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras at a conference organised by The Economist.

President Nicos Anastasiades said Sunday that foreigners with bank deposits in Cyprus who lost at least 3 million euros ($3.9 million) under an EU bailout for the island would be given passports.

"Non-resident investors who held deposits prior" to the bailout and lost "at least 3 million euros will be eligible to apply for Cypriot citizenship," which brings with it an EU passport, Anastasiades said.

French ministers will for the first time on Monday disclose their assets, in a move President Francois Hollande's Socialist government hopes will restore public confidence after a tax fraud scandal.

There was apprehension, however, that the move could backfire by revealing significant riches to a country struggling with a lengthy economic downturn.