*Traders say China shows goodwill to visiting Jack Lew. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who is in Beijing for strategic discussions. Spot yuan touched 6.2113 per dollar late in the session, its highest intraday level since China set up the domestic foreign exchange market in 1994 and toppling the former record high of 6.2124 set on Jan. 14 this year.
SAO PAULO, March 18- Volkswagen AG, Europe's largest automaker, expects sales growth in Brazil to slow this year, a senior executive said on Monday, adding that the pace of investments in local factories will hinge on sales in the coming months.
NICOSIA, March 23- Cyprus has agreed with EU/IMF lenders a 20- percent levy on deposits over 100,000 euros at leading lender Bank of Cyprus and a 4- percent levy on deposits of the same amount at other lenders, a senior Cypriot official said on Saturday.
TORONTO, March 23- Canadian police said on Saturday that they had identified a second Canadian among the dead suspects in a January attack and hostage-taking at an Algerian gas plant. Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said at the time that a Canadian gunman had coordinated the operation.
In a paper entitled "Walking Back from Cyprus", Lee Buchheit of New York law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen& Hamilton and his frequent collaborator, Mitu Gulati of Duke Law School, say European governments "trespassed on consecrated ground" with their plan to impose a levy on insured depositors in Cyprus.
WASHINGTON, March 11- Mary Jo White, the nominee to head the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, plans to tell lawmakers on Tuesday that she will bring a "bold and unrelenting" enforcement program to the agency if she is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
*Cyprus says it is close to a bailout deal. NEW YORK, March 22- U.S. stocks bounced back on Friday on hopes a deal to bail out Cyprus was near completion. Cyprus was close to a deal to raise billions of euros and unlock a bailout from the European Union that could avert a financial meltdown and its exit from the euro, its ruling party said.
MEXICO CITY, March 23- Mexico state oil company Pemex said Saturday a fire near its Francisco Madero refinery in the eastern state of Tamaulipas has been controlled and did not affect operations. The company said via its Twitter account there were no injuries, and the fire began in fields near the refinery's coking installation.
March 22- Shares in top U.S. packaged food companies Mondelez International Inc and PepsiCo Inc jumped on Friday on speculation that they could merge, after a report that activist investor Nelson Peltz has taken stakes in each.
NICOSIA, March 23- Cyprus said on Saturday it was looking at seizing a quarter of the value of big deposits at its largest bank as it races to raise the funds for a bailout from the European Union and avert financial collapse.
Pangea helped analyse seismic data from Total's Kaombo project in Angola in just nine days, instead of the four and a half months it would have taken with its previous computer, Philippe Malzac, IT director at Total's Exploration division, told Reuters. Total trumps British rival BP with the 2.3- petaflop supercomputer.
*Cyprus says close to a deal to unlock bailout money. NEW YORK, March 22- The euro rose against the dollar on Friday, posting its first weekly gain in seven weeks on hopes Cyprus will find a solution before Monday to avert a financial meltdown.
Corn, natural gas also see strong buying. March 22- Hedge funds and other big speculators have taken their bullish bets on U.S. commodities back to a one-month high from a more than a one-year low, data showed on Friday, as they bought gold this week on fears of financial meltdown in Cyprus. Corn also saw strong hedge fund buying on worries over short supply in the grain.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office last month estimated that the $85 billion in federal budget cuts known as the "sequester," which started taking hold on March 1, would cost the economy about 750,000 jobs by the end of the year.
LONDON, March 21- U.S. data suggests the percentage of ethanol in the gasoline supply is nearing the "blend wall"- the 10 percent level beyond which refiners fear to go- but perhaps not close enough to explain a sudden jump in the price of compliance credits.
LONDON, March 21- Copper edged higher on Thursday, as encouraging data from top consumer China helped bolster the outlook for demand, but gains were capped by a fall in the euro after weak euro zone economic data renewed fears about the region's growth prospects.
March 22- A natural gas pipeline has exploded in Marshall County, West Virginia, local media reports said on Friday.
*Cyprus eyes levy on bank deposits over 100,000 euros. NICOSIA, March 23- Cyprus is expected to make a dramatic U-turn on Saturday to avert the imminent threat of financial meltdown, having signalled it is willing to tax big savers in its stricken banks to clinch a bailout from the European Union.
March 22- Cisco Systems Inc must pay $70 million in damages to patent licenser XpertUniverse Inc for fraudulently obtaining technology developed by the New York company, a jury found on Friday, according to court filings. The jury also found that Cisco violated two XpertUniverse patents, and awarded an additional $34,000 in damages on those claims.
*American Realty offers $5.7 bln in cash and stock. *American Realty asks Cole Credit to call off merger with external adviser.