VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko issued several decrees on Saturday to shut state institutions and banking services in pro-Russian eastern regions, pressing a move to cut links with the rebel-held territory.

The G20 leaders summit in Australia starting on Saturday is setting up as a showdown between Western leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin, following fresh reports of Russian troops pouring into eastern Ukraine.

South Africa will resume seafood exports to Russia for the first time in almost two decades as Moscow looks elsewhere for food sources following Western sanctions over Ukraine.

Ukraine's currency lost nearly 5 percent of its value on Monday after a weekend that saw the heaviest shelling in a month hit the main rebel stronghold in the east and signs that Moscow had dispatched troops and tanks to reinforce separatists.

Ukraine, Russia and the European Union signed a deal on Thursday on the resumption of Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine for winter after several months of delay during the conflict in Ukraine.

More than a dozen oil producers have joined to lobby the federal government to reverse the 40-year-old ban on U.S. crude exports, a move that supporters say would create jobs and keep the energy boom alive, a spokesman for one of the companies and a lobbyist for another one said on Friday.

Global stock markets were heading for their best week of the year on Friday following reassuring company results, encouraging data from the world's biggest economies and signs the ECB is upping its efforts to lift Europe.

European companies in Russia warned on Tuesday they were being hurt by a Russian embargo on food imports as well as EU sanctions and risked being "sacrificed" in the standoff over Ukraine.

Female central bankers from Ukraine and its bitter rival Russia took the stage together in Washington on Saturday and described differing fallout from the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

China, the world's top coal importer, will levy import tariffs on the commodity after nearly a decade, in its latest bid to prop up ailing domestic miners who have been buffeted by rising costs and tumbling prices.

Russia plans to test launch its new heavy-lift Angara space rocket on Dec. 25, Interfax news agency quoted a source in the space industry as saying on Friday.

The suddenly unstoppable U.S. dollar is posing a triple threat to American companies' profits: driving up the costs of doing business overseas, suppressing the value of non-U.S. sales and, perhaps most worryingly, signaling weak international demand.

German luxury automaker Daimler (DAIGn.DE) has cut its growth forecast for the global car market, blaming cooler demand in emerging markets and a plunge in Russian sales which has put a fledgling European industry recovery in jeopardy.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will attend a summit of European and Asian leaders on a trip starting next week that will also include a visit to Germany and the signing of energy and high-speed rail deals with Russia, the government said.

Internet auction site eBay intends to drive a wave of consolidation in Russia's e-commerce market over the next couple of years, persuading smaller companies to get on board as the economy weakens.