Ecuadorean authorities took over three television stations, a sugar mill and dozens of other companies belonging to one of the country's most powerful business groups early Tuesday, calling it a move that should have been taken a decade ago to settle debts from a banking collapse.
TRADE
Nuclear weapons? No. But there are plenty of items on Iran's shopping list the United States is more than happy to supply: cigarettes, brassieres, bull semen and more.
Venezuela will require that all car importers and assemblers install dual tanks for gasoline and natural gas in at least 30 percent of their models by April as the government tries to curb demand for gasoline.
Brewer InBev turned up the heat in its hostile $46 billion bid for Anheuser-Busch, announcing Monday that it will attempt to remove the company's entire board.
For more than a century, the farmers who work the vast plains of central Argentina have prided themselves on growing enough food to feed much of the rest of the world.
CARIBBEAN
With their tourism-driven economies battered by a stagnant U.S. economy, expensive jet fuel and airline cutbacks, Caribbean leaders meeting this week have agreed to launch a $60 million campaign to market their region as one tourism destination.
A French judge ordered Continental Airlines and five people to stand trial on charges of manslaughter in the 2000 crash of a Concorde jet that killed 113 people, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Brazil's sugar industry, the world's largest, is urging U.S. motorists to demand the government lift restrictive import tariffs on ethanol made from cane to help reduce the record cost of motor fuels.
AIRLINES
Spirit Airlines has quietly shifted its outsourced customer service and reservations to an India-based company from call center operator PRC, which sought to abandon the money-losing contract in bankruptcy court.
Gustav Humbert, the former chief executive officer of Airbus, has been charged with insider trading for selling shares before disclosing production delays on the company's A380 superjumbo airliner.
A national strike by Peruvian mine workers for greater profit sharing and better pensions will continue until Congress sets a date for a vote on new industry legislation, a labor leader said.
IRAQ
Iraq opened international bidding for eight enormous oil and gas fields Monday, paving the way for investment in a nation with some of the world's largest petroleum reserves.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy says the European Central Bank should think carefully before raising interest rates. The ECB is widely expected to raise its rates when the board convenes Thursday amid record high euro-zone inflation. The bank has left its key interest rate unchanged at 4 percent since June 2007.
In a dusty two-room store near the town square, six women sat on benches at sewing machines, stitching together handmade dolls dressed in regional Mexican gowns.
Chen Tiezhong will likely spend the Fourth of July worrying about the future of his sprawling fireworks factory. China, where fireworks were invented, is running short of ports from which to ship the dangerous cargoes abroad.
Yields on Brazilian bonds and interest-rate futures contracts rose as inflation accelerated this month to the fastest pace in five years, increasing bets the central bank will keep raising borrowing costs.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Thursday that the country will at least triple its oil reserves from exploration of a new offshore area that includes the Western Hemisphere's largest discovery since 1976.
German airline Deutsche Lufthansa on Wednesday reaffirmed its profit outlook for the year despite higher fuel prices. The company expects 2008 profits to ''follow up on the previous year's record level,'' Lufthansa said during an investor and analyst conference in Munich.
