U.S. Internet provider AOL will buy The Huffington Post, a rapidly growing news website with nearly 25 million monthly visitors, for $315 million, the company announced Monday.

Approximately $300 million will be paid in cash, it said.

Wall Street probably will keep a close eye next week on developments in the Egypt crisis, though it did not prevent stocks from hitting their highest levels in more than two years.

Facing a thin economic calendar, investors were expected to remain glued to the massive anti-government protests seeking the immediate resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

World oil prices remained high in Asian trade Friday, with the market under pressure from the ongoing political crisis in Egypt.

New York's main futures contract, light sweet crude for March, was up 40 cents at $90.94 in afternoon trade.

Brent crude rallied to a 28-month high above $103 on Thursday as the political crisis in Egypt erupted into violence, sparking fresh concern over energy supplies in the crude-rich Middle East.

"The continued unrest in Egypt has prompted Brent oil prices to climb overnight to $103 a barrel, the highest level since September 2008," said Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch.

Lebanon's economy should be able to survive the political turmoil that has seen the appointment of a Hizbullah-backed premier due to the strength of the country's banking system and replete foreign currency reserves, analysts say.

"The financial defense lines are currently the strongest in Lebanon's history," said Marwan Barakat, chief economist at Bank Audi, one of the leading banks in the country.

Dubai's Emirates Airlines said on Wednesday it launched service to Basra in southern Iraq, its first destination in the war-torn country.

"Emirates has marked its 110th international destination today with its inaugural flight to Basra, the airline's first service into Iraq," a statement said.

Lebanon’s Fransabank won regulatory approval to raise the stakes in its Syrian unit from the current 49 percent, Syria’s state-run news agency, SANA, reported.

Fransabank SAL, with headquarters in Beirut, will boost the stake in its local business to 59.7 percent, SANA said.

World oil prices crept higher on Wednesday, after spiking above $102 on the back of stubborn fears about political turmoil in Egypt and potential knock-on effects in the oil-rich Middle East.

Brent North Sea crude for delivery in March delivery rose by just three cents to $101.77 a barrel, one day after spiking to $102.08 -- which was the highest level since September 29, 2008.

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of memory chips, said Tuesday it would fully refund customers who had bought its personal computers built with a flawed chipset from Intel Corp.

U.S. giant Intel said recently it had discovered a design problem in the new chipset that is expected to cost it $1 billion in repairs and lost revenue while also delaying the release of computers using its new microprocessors.

BP on Tuesday posted a loss of $4.914 billion (£3.1 billion) for 2010, the group's first annual shortfall since 1992, and raised its estimate of costs arising from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to $40.9 billion (£25.5 billion).

The loss compared with a profit of $13.955 (£8.7 billion) in 2009, while the costs estimate was lifted from the previous forecast of $40 billion (£24.9 billion).