latest world business news

The Swiss post office bank, PostFinance, has frozen the accounts of Wikileaks founder Julian Paul Assange. The whistle-blowing website says the freeze includes a defence fund and personal assets worth 31,000 euros. Wikileaks has published hundreds of secret US diplomatic cables, angering the US government and triggering moves by several companies including PayPal and Amazon to end their services. Meanwhile, a warrant for Mr Assange's arrest has reached the UK authorities. Sources have told the BBC that the European Arrest Warrant for Mr Assange arrived on Monday afternoon. Swedish prosecutors want to question Mr Assange in connection with allegations of rape, which he denies. He is believed to be in hiding somewhere in south-east England. Once the police have located him, he would be expected to appear at a magistrate's court within 24 hours, pending extradition to Sweden, says the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner. The move by Switzerland's PostFinance

The Halomonas titanicae bacterium was found in "rusticles", the porous and delicate icicle-like structures that form on rusting iron. Samples of rusticles from Titanic were gathered in 1991 by the Mir 2 robotic submersible. Various bacteria and fungi live within the delicate structures - first identified on the Titanic - actually feeding off of the rusting metal. The find is described in the journal International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. Researchers from Dalhousie University and the Ontario Science Centre in Canada and the University of Seville in Spain isolated the H. titanicae bacteria from those samples. They sequenced the microbes' DNA before discovering that they constituted a new member of the salt-loving Halomonas genus. The bacteria are of particular interest because they may shed light on the mechanism by which rusticles form, and thus on the general "recycling" that such microbes carry out on submerged metal structure

Iran claimed Sunday it could now use domestically mined uranium to produce nuclear fuel , giving the country complete control over a process the West suspects is geared toward producing weapons. Tehran made the claim a day before a new round of nuclear talks with world powers that want to rein in Iran's uranium enrichment — a process that can be used either to make fuel for nuclear energy or nuclear weapons. The nuclear chief said Iran had for the first time delivered domestically mined raw uranium to a processing facility — allowing it to bypass U.N. sanctions prohibiting import of the material. Four rounds of U.N. sanctions have targeted Iran's uranium enrichment program. Nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said the uranium ore concentrate , known as yellowcake , was produced at the Gachin uranium mine in southern Iran and delivered to the uranium conversion facility in the central city of Isfahan for reprocessing. Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, sa

A Chinese passenger train hit a record speed of 302 miles per hour (486 kilometers per hour) Friday during a test run of a yet-to-be opened link between Beijing and Shanghai, state media said. China Railway High-Speed (CRH) train enters Bengbu south railway station, a stop in Anhui province on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line, on Friday Dec. 3, 2010. The Xinhua News Agency said it was the fastest speed recorded by an unmodified conventional commercial train. Other types of trains in other countries have traveled faster. A specially modified French TGV train reached 357.2 mph (574.8 kph) during a 2007 test, while a Japanese magnetically levitated train sped to 361 mph (581 kph) in 2003. State television footage showed the sleek white train whipping past green farm fields in eastern China. It reached the top speed on a segment of the 824-mile (1,318-kilometer) -long line between Zaozhuang city in Shandong province and Bengbu city in Anhui province, Xinhua said. The line i

Newly appointed South Korean defense minister Kim Kwan-jin took office Saturday and vowed a strong military response that would force rival North Korea to surrender if it attacks the South again. Newly appointed Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin salutes during his inauguration ceremony at the South Korean Defense Ministry in Seoul on Saturday, "If North Korea carries out a military provocation on our territory and people again, we must retaliate immediately and strongly until they completely surrender," Kim Kwan-jin said in a speech Saturday to senior military officials. Kim also called for military readiness, saying North Korea would plot new provocations. He later visited the island targeted by the North Korean attack and vowed to take strong measures to ensure North Korea would not dare to make more provocations. He said the military would quickly hold firing drills if the weather permits, according to the Yonhap news agency. Before this, during a confirmation he

The US jobless rate surged to 9.8 percent in November, a hammer blow to the economic recovery and to President Barack Obama's hopes for a quick end to high unemployment. The world's largest economy created many fewer jobs than expected and the unemployment rate rose from 9.6 percent to its highest level since April, the Labor Department reported. A measly 39,000 jobs were created during the month, well short of the 130,000 predicted by economists and well beneath the levels needed to dent unemployment rates. Job losses in the retail and manufacturing sector led the decline as the employment market once again proved unable to untether itself from the long-ended recession. The jobless rate has remained above nine percent for the last 19 months, leaving more than 15 million jobseekers unemployed. The White House, under pressure to prove its economic policies are working, acknowledged the unemployment rate was "unacceptably high." Massive government stimulus p

Pakistan's one-day captain Shahid Afridi said Friday he was not fully satisfied with preparations for next year's World Cup, acknowledging low expectations of victory. Afridi expressed reservations in the light of problems that have dogged Pakistan's recent tours with players disciplined and dragged into damaging spot-fixing allegations. "I am not 100 percent satisfied with the team's preparations for the World Cup," Afridi told reporters at a local function. "We've had problems on every tour, and although there aren't high expectations, as captain I'm positive and will keep on motivating the team," said Afridi. His comments came one day after manager Intikhab Alam said Pakistan was capable of winning the World Cup -- to be jointly hosted by Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka from February 19 to April 2. Key players Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammed Aamer -- suspended by the International Cricket Council (ICC) over spot-fixin