VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Iranian businessman Cyrus Etemadi has had a stand at Berlin's ITB travel trade fair every year for more than 20 years, even when tension with the West meant few tourists visited the former ancient kingdom of Persia.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the United States this week to take a tough line against Iran, he argued that world powers could always push for a better nuclear deal because the Islamic Republic was vulnerable to low oil prices.

Brent crude oil steadied above $60 a barrel on Wednesday after Saudi Arabia's oil minister said he expected the oil market to balance itself.

Iran is sweetening the terms it offers on oil development contracts to draw the interest of foreign investors deterred by sanctions and low crude prices, as its pragmatic president seeks to deliver on his promise of economic recovery.

OPEC's oil supply has risen this month due to more Angolan exports and steady to higher output in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers, a Reuters survey showed, a sign key members are standing firm in refusing to prop up prices.

A diplomatic push by Venezuela and Iran for an OPEC oil output cut has failed to soften the refusal of the group's Gulf members to do so for now, delegates said on Monday.

Oil fell 5 percent to its lowest in nearly six years on Monday, extending the second-deepest rout on record, after Goldman Sachs warned that prices would fall further and Gulf oil producers showed no sign of cutting output.

Falling world oil prices will hurt countries across the Middle East unless Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude exporter, takes action to reverse the slump, Iran's deputy foreign minister told Reuters.

Iran is to expand what it calls "smart filtering" of the Internet, a policy of censoring undesirable content on websites without banning them completely, as it used to, the government said on Friday.

A big oil price slide will hurt Iran's attempts to rescue battered living standards, but economic pain is unlikely to soften its stance in nuclear talks or end aid to allies such as Syria, matters seen by its ruling clerics as strategic priorities.

The United States has sought help from China, Japan, South Korea and Russia in combating cyber attacks such as the one Washington on Friday accused North Korea of carrying out against Sony Pictures, U.S. officials said.

Oil producers group OPEC can ride out a slump in oil prices and keep output unchanged, its head said on Sunday, arguing market weakness did not reflect supply and demand fundamentals and could have been driven by speculators.

A February 2014 cyber attack against casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp crippled thousands of servers across the company’s network by wiping them with highly destructive malware, Bloomberg Businessweek reported on Thursday.

Standard Chartered (STAN.L) will face another three years of scrutiny for compliance with U.S. standards related to sanctions against certain countries, according to documents filed on Tuesday that also noted another probe of the bank is underway.

Iranian hackers have infiltrated some of the world's top energy, transport and infrastructure companies over the past two years in a campaign that could allow them to eventually cause physical damage, according to U.S. cyber security firm Cylance.