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Russia's annexation of the Crimea peninsula could cost Kiev hundreds of billions of dollars, Ukraine's interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on Friday, quoted by Interfax news agency.
Speaking to reporters in Kiev after signing a deal in Brussels on closer ties with the EU, Yatsenyuk said Russia was seizing "dozens of installations" from Ukraine worth "not billions, but hundreds of billions of dollars".
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Visa and MasterCard have stopped servicing the credit cards of customers using Russian banks affected by the economic sanctions announced in Washington, the banks said Friday.
Bank Rossiya, used by close associates of President Vladimir Putin, said in a statement that Visa and MasterCard had "without warning stopped providing its payment services to the bank's clients."
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Ukraine's interim premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Friday called for global economic pressure against Russia to halt its drive to forge "a new world order."
Speaking after the signature of a landmark EU-Ukraine partnership deal, Yatsenyuk said economic pressure was the only way to contain what he described as Moscow's unprecedented disregard for internationally agreed borders.
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All but one of the 30 largest banks are now strong enough to weather another severe economic crash, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
In the newest of the series of health examinations mandated after the 2008 financial crisis, only Zions Bancorp could not measure up to a basic capital standard in a theoretical drastic meltdown of the economy.
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Japan plans to provide nearly $1.0 billion in financial aid to Ukraine, public broadcaster NHK said Friday, as relations with Russia cool over the Crimea crisis.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is to announce the support when he attends a Group of Seven meeting in the Netherlands on the sidelines of a nuclear-security summit next week, NHK said.
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The Fitch ratings agency on Friday revised its outlook for Russia to negative from stable after the United States slapped new sanctions against Russian officials amid the Ukraine crisis.
"The revision of the outlook to negative reflects the potential impact of sanctions on Russia's economy and business environment," Fitch said in a statement.
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European leaders were on Thursday to debate biting economic sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea as Ukraine tore up key ties with the Kremlin and drew up plans to evacuate its nationals from the rebel peninsula.
The European Union is under intense pressure to find a credible response to an explosive security crisis on the 28-nation bloc's eastern frontier that NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Wednesday called "the gravest threat to European security and stability since the end of the Cold War."
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Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest lender, said on Thursday that it was revising down its 2013 earnings to reflect the recent settlement of a long-running legal dispute.
Deutsche Bank said in a statement that net profit amounted to 681 million euros ($942 million) in 2013, rather than the 1.08 billion euros originally reported in January.
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Toyota admitted that it hid information about defects that caused Toyota and Lexus vehicles to accelerate unexpectedly causing injuries and deaths and agreed to pay a record $1.2 billion to settle an investigation by the U.S. government.
Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that the penalty is the largest of its kind ever imposed on an auto company. The four-year criminal investigation focused on whether Toyota promptly reported the problems related to unintended acceleration.
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Japan on Thursday passed its biggest-ever budget, a $937 billion spending package aimed at propping up growth as consumers brace for the country's first sales tax hike in over 15 years.
A total of 136 lawmakers in the 242-member upper house, controlled by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, voted for the package, against 102 opposition votes, a parliamentary spokesman said. Two lawmakers did not cast a vote, one seat is vacant and the house speaker only casts a ballot in a tie.
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