IBT Staff Reporter

Citigroup Inc says two of its traders are exempt from a government review of the bank's top executive pay packages, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb that killed seven people on Saturday in the heart of the Afghan capital's most secure district five days before an election the Islamist group has vowed to disrupt.

South Korea's president on Saturday called on North Korea to reach a deal to cut conventional arms amassed on their heavily fortified border and renewed a pledge to provide aid if the impoverished North ends its atomic ambitions.

A ransom demand has been made for the lost merchant ship Arctic Sea, Finnish media said on Saturday, but the whereabouts of the vessel were still unknown in a saga looking increasingly like the plot of a spy thriller.

Taiwan leaders, already under fire over the response to a typhoon that likely killed hundreds, have accepted foreign aid after earlier refusing the offers, officials said on Saturday, as the president apologized.

Palestinian Islamists Hamas struck back at an al-Qaeda challenge to their grip on the Gaza Strip by storming a mosque in overnight battles that left the leader of the Warriors of God splinter group among up to 28 dead.

Opel labor leader Klaus Franz branded Volkswagen's renewed threat to pull business from Canadian auto parts supplier Magna if it acquires VW's closest German rival as tantamount to blackmail.

Scrutiny of an air traffic controller's actions, including whether a phone call may have distracted him, intensified on Friday as investigators released new details about the deadly collision of a small plane and a tourist helicopter over New York's Hudson River last week.

U.S. Senator Jim Webb met Myanmar top military leader Than Shwe and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Saturday and announced the release of an American jailed for visiting the Nobel peace laureate.

President Barack Obama said on Saturday U.S. healthcare worked better for insurance companies than for patients, as he pressed his case for a major overhaul that critics say is too expensive.

Mexico's Cemex, the world's No. 3 cement maker, said on Friday it finalized a $15 billion debt restructuring to avoid default and announced it could sell shares worth about $1.7 billion as part of the deal.

The Syrian unit of Qatar National Bank (QNB) said on Saturday a 1.7 billion Syrian pounds ($36.9 million) initial public offering was oversubscribed 1.7 times.

The previous chief executive of Volkswagen, Bernd Pischetsrieder, is favourite to head the supervisory board of German car parts maker Continental AG, magazine Der Spiegel reported, without saying where it obtained its information.

Facebook's vision of becoming a utility that offers activities to keep people online for hours could set it on a collision course with the Web's giants.

A consortium dominated by Swedish owners plans to bid for Ford Motor Co's Volvo car unit, a Swedish business daily reported on Saturday without disclosing its sources.

China's 12 joint-stock commercial banks posted net profit of 45.2 billion yuan ($6.6 billion) in the first half of this year, down 19.3 percent from a year earlier, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday, quoting a banking regulatory official.

Hedge fund Citadel, which launched an investment banking group earlier this year, has hired a senior Citigroup Inc financial institutions investment banker, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Islamic lender Kuwait Finance House (KFH) is tying up with United States apartment building owner UDR Inc to buy high income property in the United States to tap lower asset prices.

A U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) judge on Friday issued an initial determination in favor of Nokia Oyj in an action brought by InterDigital Inc against Nokia.

Back in 1969, Woodstock organizers billed their three-day festival as An Aquarian Exposition. But although the concert became free when an expected crowd of 200,000 grew half a million strong, it was conceived as a business proposition.

A group of Asian manufacturers filed court papers on Friday in an attempt to push U.S. women's apparel brand Ellen Tracy into bankruptcy.

A massive rally in U.S. stocks since March has reawakened bullish spirits, but insiders are jumping out of the market in a sign the run up is getting stretched.

Colonial Bank, of Montgomery Ala., was shuttered on Friday and its assets sold to southeast regional bank BB&T Corp, marking the largest bank failure this year.

The Legg Mason Inc unit run by star fund manager Bill Miller sold off a number of financial stocks in the second quarter, filings on Friday showed.

Billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc reported on Friday a new 1.2 million share investment in Becton Dickinson & Co and an increased stake in Johnson & Johnson , as it boosted exposure to some health-care companies.

Billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros' Soros Fund Management reported holdings of $4.2 billion at the end of the second quarter after cutting its stake in a number of retailers.

The U.S. official responsible for setting pay for top executives at finance firms that received billions of dollars in government aid will take his time and conduct his work in private, a spokesman said on Friday.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said in a statement on Friday that regulators have closed Colonial Bank and Southeast regional bank BB&T will buy about $22 billion in assets of Colonial.

Latin American stocks and currencies posted losses on Friday after U.S. consumer sentiment weakened unexpectedly in August, raising questions about the strength of the economic recovery and increasing global aversion to risk.