News from Business World

TEHRAN - Iran will pursue its nuclear path, the country’s highest authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said today, speaking just before a deadline set by world powers in a nuclear dispute. 

HARARE - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said today crisis talks with the opposition were going well and he wanted negotiations aimed at solving the country’s political impasse to succeed. 

LONDON — British Airways (BA) and Spanish airline Iberia ended months of speculation yesterday when they confirmed merger talks that could lead to the creation of a “strong European airline” fit to survive in the “current economic environment”. 

BARRING last-minute changes, President Thabo Mbeki will visit Zimbabwe today for crucial meetings with that country’s main political parties and their leaders involved in power-sharing talks, in a bid to clear hurdles to a final agreement.  

LUSAKA — Rising global oil and food prices, although a serious developmental challenge, may be an opportunity for poor nations to increase crop production for bio-fuels and food, Zambia’s vice president Rupiah Banda said. 

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — An al Qaeda chemical and biological weapons expert named Abu Khabab al-Masri was killed in a suspected US missile strike, Pakistani intelligence officials said a day after the attack. 

OFFICIALS close to the Zimbabwe power-sharing talks say negotiations in SA have deadlocked. 

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s highest court began considering yesterday whether to shut down the governing AK Party for Islamist activities against a background of tension following two bomb attacks in Istanbul at the weekend.

WASHINGTON — Global markets are still under strain from the US housing crisis and rising inflationary pressures are making it tougher to set monetary policy to keep the lid on prices without risking financial stability, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said yesterday.  

THE long vigil in expectation of a dollar rebound has at times during the past few years resembled Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s 1953 play about the futility, despair and frustrations of a couple of tramps who spend two days waiting for a man who never shows up.

PHNOM PENH — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former communist who has ruled for two decades, won 73% of the seats on offer in Sunday’s election due to rising prosperity and nationalism that has strengthened his grip on power. 

WASHINGTON — Presidential rivals Barack Obama and John McCain shifted the campaign focus back to the faltering US economy yesterday, with Obama convening an all-star panel of advisers to help him hatch new approaches to the problem. 

BELGRADE — Ultranationalists are planning a huge antigovernment rally in the Serbian capital this evening, and Radovan Karadzic’s lawyer has predicted the government will try to whisk the arrested war crimes suspect off to the United Nations (UN) tribunal before the protest. 

CHICAGO — Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s foreign tour cemented his status as an international political superstar yester day, but raised the question of whether rampant adulation abroad will translate into votes in the US.