The Ukrainian prime minister arrived in Moscow on Monday as Russia and Ukraine prepared to sign a deal ending a contentious dispute that cut off Russian natural gas shipments to Europe for nearly two weeks. Yulia Tymoshenko and her Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, reached a preliminary agreement over the weekend to restore gas supplies to [...]

Citigroup Inc (C.N) agreed on Tuesday to merge its Smith Barney brokerage with Morgan Stanley’s (MS.N) wealth management unit, a big step in what could be a dismantling of what was once the world’s largest bank. The Citigroup-Morgan Stanley venture will create the largest U.S. brokerage, with more than 20,000 brokers and $1.7 trillion in [...]

Ukraine signed a deal Monday to allow independent monitors to track natural gas supplies from Russia to Europe, with no conditions, Russia’s gas giant Gazprom said. The agreement, which Gazprom said was signed Monday morning during talks in Kiev, could open the way for a resumption of gas shipments to Europe through pipelines that cross [...]

A top Hamas leader says the Gaza war has killed the last chance for settlement and negotiations with Israel. Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal condemned Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip as a “holocaust” in a fiery speech broadcast on the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera Mashaal’s comments Saturday come as Hamas teams are in Cairo [...]

Russia and the European Union signed a deal Saturday on the deployment of EU observers to monitor the flow of natural gas across Ukraine, clearing the way for restarting Russian gas supplies to a freezing Europe. Russia said it wants the written deal in place before resuming shipments, but it also needs to be signed [...]