Oil prices rose on Tuesday after the West slapped economic sanctions on major crude exporter Iran, helping to offset weak demand worries caused by the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, analysts said.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in January, climbed $1.43 to $98.35 a barrel.

Greece's largest trade union called Tuesday for a 24-hour strike next week to protest austerity measures, which would be the first major walkout since the appointment of an interim coalition government earlier this month.

The GSEE union, which represents mainly private sector workers, said it was aiming for a general strike on Dec. 1, but was waiting for a decision later Tuesday by the country's civil servants' union as to whether they would join. Greece's last general strike, held in October, saw services across the country shut down for two days.

The Indian rupee plunged to an all time low against the dollar Tuesday as global demand for the U.S. currency and India's darkening economic picture swamped out central bank efforts to staunch the decline.

The rupee hit 52.73 to the dollar, breaching its March 3, 2009 low, analysts said.

The collapse of talks aimed at reducing the staggering U.S. budget deficit weighed on world markets Tuesday but failed to stifle a rebound in Europe.

Stocks took a pummeling on Monday after a so-called supercommittee in Congress failed to reach a deal to cut the U.S. federal budget deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years. While not entirely unexpected, the failure heightened worries that political bickering — in the U.S. and Europe — will hurt efforts to cut debt during a period of declining economic growth.

Operations at Aden's refinery came to a complete halt as crude oil supplies dried off after a pipeline was attacked in the latest act of sabotage on oil and gas installations in Yemen, a company official said Monday.

"The company's operations have stopped due to the lack of crude oil," said an official from the government-owned Aden Refinery Company.

An increase in French government borrowing costs, slowing growth and the Eurozone debt crisis threatens the country's top credit rating, Moody's ratings agency warned on Monday, adding to market jitters.

France is fighting desperately to retain its 'triple 'A credit status and has slashed spending and tightened up on tax revenues in an effort to stabilize its strained public finances but the markets are not convinced.

Egypt's stock exchange tumbled 4.04 percent on closing on Monday, as deadly clashes between police and protesters threatened to overshadow the first parliamentary polls since Hosni Mubarak was toppled.

The main EGX-30 index dipped to 3,860.99 points -- a drop of 4.04 percent -- as clashes raged into a third day in Cairo's Tahrir Square between security forces and protesters demanding the end of military rule.

For the leader of Spain's right, Mariano Rajoy, winning Sunday's elections may prove to be the easy part: now he has to win over the markets.

Rajoy will have to show he can trim Spain's bulging budget, and quickly, or risk the same fierce financial pressures that forced governments in Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Italy from power.

McDonald's Corp. said Friday it has dropped a Minnesota-based egg supplier after an animal rights group released an undercover video of operations at the egg producer's farms in three states.

The video by Mercy for Animals shows what the group calls animal cruelty at five Sparboe Farms facilities in Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado. Its images include a worker swinging a bird around by its feet, hens packed into cramped cages, male chicks being tossed into plastic bags to suffocate and workers cutting off the tips of chick's beaks.

Premier Wen Jiabao told U.S. President Barack Obama that China would increase the flexibility of the yuan while stressing that reforms had already had an effect, state television reported Saturday.

"We are closely watching the changes to the yuan's exchange rate ... and will encourage the yuan's flexibility in both directions," CCTV quoted Wen as saying at a meeting with Obama on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Indonesia.