
A US appeals court on Wednesday granted an emergency stay order that gives Argentina more time to argue against making a 1.33 billion dollars payment to investors who rejected two debt restructurings in the nation's 2002 sovereign debt default.

British Petroleum has been temporarily suspended from new contracts with the US government, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said. While it is unclear how long the ban will last, it follows BP's record fine earlier this month over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Crude production from the Bakken and Three Forks formations in North Dakota could rise by another 50-100% in the next three years, and not start to decline until 2020 or even 2025, according to official projections from the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division.

Argentina suffered a stinging blow late Wednesday when New York federal judge Thomas Griesa, citing threats by the country's leaders to defy his rulings in a decade-old dispute over defaulted sovereign bonds, ordered immediate payment.

Gasoline rationing in New York City which was scheduled to end on Monday has been extended through Friday, even as the gas station lines that prompted it have all but disappeared.

US foreign policy is being reoriented to promote American economic interests after Washington was tied down by two wars in the past decade, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday.

BP Plc agreed on Thursday to plead guilty to a raft of charges in the deadly Gulf of Mexico spill and pay a record 4.5 billion dollars including the biggest criminal fine in United States history. Three BP employees were also charged, two of them with manslaughter.

US President Barack Obama plans to give new thrust to a comprehensive immigration reform in the country, one that would not only address the issue of illegal immigrants but also how to attract and retain highly skilled manpower from the rest of the world.

President Obama has reiterated his call for high earners in the US to pay more in taxes, in his first news conference since winning re-election. He called for quick legislation to rule out tax rises on the first 250.000 dollars of income, but refused to extend cuts for the wealthiest 2%.

Argentina filed on Tuesday a petition for a retrial at the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals over a debt ruling that would force the country to pay holdout creditors owning bonds in default since 2002.