IBT Staff Reporter

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is under severe pressure, his administration derailed from its legislative agenda by a series of corruption scandals that have come to dominate politics.

Investors in Diamondback Capital Management, one of four hedge funds raided by federal authorities last year as part of an insider trading probe, have asked to pull more than $1 billion from the firm, a source familiar with the fund's communications to clients said on Tuesday.

Chinese telecom equipment makers have their sights set on the United States, a massive market that has so far been largely off limits to them because of fears over the security of key national infrastructure.

Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd expects to turn net profitable as it seeks other businesses to add power to its radio muscle by June, its top executive told Reuters late on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh defended himself on Wednesday against accusations his government was a lameduck, saying it was trying to bring justice in some of the country's biggest corruption scandals in decades.

NEW YORK - Major League Gaming, the largest professional competitive video game league, will be expanding to new markets outside North America thanks to a new partnership with IMG, the global sports and entertainment company.

Shares elsewhere in Asia <.MIAPJ0000PUS> fell slightly and U.S. oil prices recovered to nearly $85 a barrel partly due to a surprise drop in weekly crude stocks.

Dell Inc's quarterly earnings and margins blew past Wall Street expectations as component costs slid and corporations replaced aging technology, propelling its shares 6 percent higher.

Nir Rosen - a Left-wing journalist and fellow from the NYU Center of Law and Security - has used this incident to spew his personal venom against Logan on Twitter, calling forth widespread condemnation

Sterling rose in Asia on Wednesday as accelerating UK inflation fueled talk of an early interest rate rise, while a weaker yen helped to send Japanese stocks to the highest level since last May.

BHP Billiton , the world's biggest miner, plans to pour $80 billion into expansions over the next five years and return cash to investors rather than chase ambitious takeovers, after nearly doubling its first-half profit to a record.

The Group of 20 wealthy and emerging nations is likely to encourage emerging countries to let their currencies float more freely when they meet this week, in a repeat of language used last year, a G20 official said on Tuesday.

A frail Bernard Madoff, facing the rest of his life in prison, said a variety of banks and hedge funds were complicit in and had to know about his epic Ponzi scheme before it was uncovered, The New York Times reported.

JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said his bank will not be goaded into doing something dumb with its capital, even as it prepares an aggressive expansion in consumer and private banking over the next five years.

Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co said it filed a motion seeking approval to close 32 stores in six states as the bankrupt grocer tries to fend off growing pressure in the low-margin supermarket business.

A key congressional panel charged with overseeing financial matters plans to question Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives over their multimillion-dollar compensation packages paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

A former JPMorgan Chase & Co private banker has filed a new whistleblower complaint against the bank, saying it ignored many red flags about a suspicious client even after the fraud of another client, Bernard Madoff, was exposed.

Trian Group offered to buy Family Dollar Stores Inc for $55 to $60 per share in cash as billionaire investor Nelson Peltz bet that low-income Americans will watch their pennies for some time yet.

Dell Inc posted much better-than-expected profit and margins, as large and small businesses continued to spend on new technology hardware.

The head of Fannie Mae and his firm's government overseer on Tuesday defended the use of millions in taxpayer dollars to pay legal bills for former executives accused of fraud.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday the United States needs to shore up its massive pension program without slashing Social Security benefits or subjecting them to the whims of the stock market.

It is 50 years since the last U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba but the island's communist leaders believe another one has begun -- not on the shores of the Bay of Pigs as in 1961, but in the virtual world of the Internet.

Google tried hard to win Nokia over to its Android mobile platform before Nokia decided to throw its lot in with Microsoft, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said.

Deutsche Boerse faces a long, hard struggle to get approvals from a host of regulators for its $10.2-billion takeover of NYSE Euronext to form the world's largest exchange operator.

As part of a post 9/11 training and preparedness military mission, F-16 jets, a coast guard helicopter and civil patrol aircraft will be flying over the Washington D.C. area from midnight to 2 a.m on Wednesday, officials said on Tuesday.

The United States hopes the Group of 20 meeting in Paris this weekend will begin coming to grips with how to handle rapid flows of capital that stoke inflation and cause currency rate disruptions, a Treasury official said on Tuesday.

Wide differences between rich and poor countries may frustrate France's hope of taking a bold step toward stabilizing the global economy at a Group of 20 finance ministers meeting this week.

EBay Inc said on Tuesday that its mobile shopping application would be pre-loaded onto smartphones sold by Telefonica's 02 unit in the United Kingdom.

Nvidia has given Wall Street one of its best comeback stories in years and has been rewarded with a hefty share rally, but some investors now question how long its new lead in mobile chips will last.