Oil prices eased slightly in Asia Friday after hitting a series of new highs this week, bolstered by a weak dollar.

Brazil's central bank on Wednesday opted to hold its benchmark interest rate at 14.25 percent for a sixth consecutive time, amid stubbornly high inflation and political uncertainty.

The bank, which makes rate decisions eight times a year, has held its key Selic rate steady since the last of seven consecutive hikes in July 2015.

The speaker of Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly said Wednesday the legislature cannot pay lawmakers or employees because the government has failed to allocate its budget.

Leading opposition figure Henry Ramos Allup told journalists the legislature has run out of money, the latest victim of the crisis gripping the recession-racked country.

Facebook on Wednesday fielded a plan to tighten Mark Zuckerberg's grip on the helm as the booming social network reported stellar profit.

Oil prices dipped in Asia Thursday as traders took profits after crude costs hit a new high for the year in response to falling US production.

Prices surged to 2016 peaks for the second straight day Wednesday after the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged but appeared less concerned about global conditions, opening the door a crack to a rate hike in June.

Japanese video-game maker Nintendo Co. reported a 24 billion yen ($216 million) loss for January-March Wednesday, bigger than the loss it reported the previous year.

Nintendo also said Wednesday that its new game platform codenamed NX will be launched globally in March next year. Some game fans had expected the machine might be shown at the annual E3 electronics show in Los Angeles in June.

Twitter gets lots of grief from investors because it hasn't taken over the world the way Facebook did, at least in terms of amassing users.

But maybe it's destined to stay small, serving a vital, if limited, role for the public. Maybe Twitter just isn't meant to be an all-encompassing social utility. Maybe stock price is not the only lens through which a company can be valued. Twitter, perhaps even in spite of its difficult interface and site-specific lingo, has become a cultural force since its 2006 founding.

Apple sold more than 51 million iPhones in the first three months of this year — and that's the problem.

That's 10 million fewer iPhones than the tech giant sold during the same quarter a year ago. As a result, Apple on Tuesday reported its first drop in quarterly revenue in 13 years — and the first-ever year-over-year decline in iPhone sales.

Britons would be less well off if they voted to leave the European Union than if they stayed, the head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Wednesday.

"Brexit is like a tax. It is the equivalent to roughly missing out on about one month's income within four years," secretary general Angel Gurria told BBC radio ahead of the publication of an OECD report on the subject.

In a move which could lead to continental price wars and reduce Russian market domination, the first shipment of U.S. natural gas to the European Union arrived overnight Tuesday in the Portuguese port of Sines, an AFP journalist reported.

The first consignment of U.S. gas for European distribution comes amid the shale gas revolution which Washington hopes will see it become a player in an EU market where Russia is currently the main supplier.