Tuesday newspaper round-up: Russia, North Korea, BP...

According to Alexis Kudrin, Moscow’s former finance minister and a key ally of president Vladimir Putin, Russia is heading for a “full-blown economic crisis”, writes The Times. He said that the turmoil could trigger a wave of corporate defaults across the country and urged the Kremlin to start negotiating to end Western sanctions.

North Korea experienced one of its worst ever internet outages days after US President Barack Obama vowed a "proportional" response for the hermit country's cyber attack on a Hollywood studio, according to The Telegraph. North Korea began having issues on Friday and by Monday night the state was completely cut off from the world wide web.

BP has claimed that penalties for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill should reflect the recent collapse in crude prices as it nears the end of its legal battle, The Times reports. The company has insisted it should pay less than the $16bn-18bn the US government is seeking.

According to research from Begbies Trainer, over 24,000 UK retailers are suffering from “significant financial stress”, writes The Guardian. This number is up 54% on last year as a food-price war among the major supermarkets has forced the rest of the high street to cut prices.

“Banks’ scope to use credit rating agencies to assess the risks in their portfolios will be sharply reduced as global regulators push through new standards aimed at making lenders safer,” the Financial Times writes. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision wants to restrict banks’ reliance on external ratings and has called on firms to improve their own risk assessments.

Brent crude crashed below the $60 per barrel level again on Monday after Saudi Arabia’s oil minister said his country would not intervene to revive prices, The Telegraph reported. Ali al-Naimi, who oversees the world’s largest exporter of crude, claimed in an interview that even if the price of oil fell to $20 per barrel the kingdom would do nothing to arrest the decline.

The UK is looking to make the manipulation of market benchmarks a criminal offence, widening the scope of laws to include seven more rates, The Scotsman says. These new laws will cover the currency, gold, oil and silver markets by next April.