Two U.S.-based academics won the Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for groundbreaking research on contract theory that has helped design insurance policies, executive pay and even prison management.

Saudi Arabia said on Monday it was "not unthinkable" that the price of crude oil could surge to $60 a barrel by the end of the year but warned against drastic production cuts that might shock markets.

Speaking in the opening keynote speech at the World Energy Congress in Istanbul, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said that whatever the oil price the kingdom was in good shape to implement its reform vision to transform the structure of its crude-based economy by 2030. 

Chinese internet billionaire Jack Ma has bought a stake in cinema legend Steven Spielberg's company, they said, the latest tie-up between China and Hollywood as they seek to make movies for audiences in the Middle Kingdom and beyond.

Alibaba Pictures, a unit of Ma's sprawling e-commerce conglomerate, has taken a minority shareholding in Spielberg's Amblin Partners, a film creation company that includes DreamWorks studios. 

As cities expand, eating up swathes of countryside in the process, agricultural pioneers are finding new ways to grow the fresh produce we need, in containers, empty buildings and any other spare space they can find to create new vertical farms.

Egypt may soon receive the first tranche of a crucial $12 billion aid package, the head of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde said Saturday.

Officials in Cairo reached an agreement in principle with the IMF in August for the aid package but it was conditioned on a series of reforms and remains subject to approval by the Fund's executive board.

More than one in five Japanese companies have employees who work such long hours they are at serious risk of death, according to a new government survey into the country's notoriously strenuous working culture.

As Egypt braces for austerity reforms, the military has expanded its economic role, at times helping President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi assuage the impact of rising prices on the country's poor.

Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem said Friday that repeated U.S. fines on European banks were eroding the stability of the European finance system.

With Deutsche Bank now trying to negotiate down a threatened $14 billion fine from the U.S. Department of Justice, Dijsselbloem said there is a limit to what should be done in punishing weakened banks for past misdeeds.

Banks were reopening Friday in Brazil after a 31-day strike ended with employees getting some if not all of the pay rise demanded.

About half of bank branches around Brazil had shuttered for the longest strike in the sector's history. Employees had demanded a 15 percent pay increase, partly to offset Brazil's inflation, currently at 8.5 percent.

The G20 warned Friday of the risks to the global economy of populist politicians playing up anti-globalization sentiments to voters.

With the global economy already dragging, finance ministers of the group of leading economies said such populism could further hurt growth.