The world can weather a spike in oil prices, U.S. President Barack Obama said, as Saudi Arabia offered some respite to fears over Middle East oil supplies by indicating it can cover export cuts resulting from Libya's civil war. After a surge in Brent oil prices to 2-1/2 year highs near $120 a barrel, South

Deutsche Bank's South Korean brokerage unit was fined nearly $1 mln by the nation's exchange operator, the largest ever imposed by it, for failing to notify it about big derivative trades on time. The Korea Exchange (KRX) also wanted that one Deutsche employee resign or be suspended, and that two other employees at the firm

Oil surged more than 7.5% to its highest since August 2008 on Thursday on concern that uprisings in Libya could spread to other major oil producers in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. Brent crude oil for April spiked up $8.54 a barrel to a peak of $119.79 before easing to around $114 by 1615

Access to the networking site LinkedIn was disrupted in China on Thursday, following online calls on other sites for gatherings inspired by protests against authoritarian regimes across the Middle East. It was not immediately clear whether the blockage on domestic Chinese internet lines of LinkedIn, one of the few foreign networking sites not previously blocked

Royal Bank of Scotland's high bad debt charges in Ireland and a drop in investment banking income overshadowed its return to profit in the final months of 2010. Stephen Hester, chief executive of the majority nationalised bank, said on Thursday that his turnaround plan was ahead of target. But he also said political pressures, such

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who rocked the U.S. government by publishing thousands of secret diplomatic memos, must be extradited to Sweden to face sex crimes allegations, a British judge ruled on Thursday. Assange's lawyers said immediately they planned to appeal against the decision to London's High Court and it could still be months before the

Moody's Investors Service has downgraded a number of ratings of Bahrain-based Arab Banking Corporation B.S.C. due to its majority-control by the central bank of Libya. Moody’s said it lowered the foreign currency deposit ratings to Baa3/Prime-3 from A3/Prime-2 and the bank's baseline credit assessment (BCA) to Ba1, from Baa3, which situates the bank at the

* $120/barrel seen as key level for global economy Soaring oil prices are reaching levels that could threaten to brake improving but tentative global economic recovery, with an outside chance of a new recession or that most destructive of conditions, stagflation. If the price spike is sustained, it will soon add pressure on central banks