Monday Morning Business Update

But Citigroup executives hope the talks with U.S. federal officials will result in a stake closer to 25 percent, the Journal reported.

The lender is discussing with U.S. officials a scenario in which a substantial portion of the $45 billion in preferred shares held by the U.S. government, amounting to a 7.8 percent stake in Citigroup, would convert into common stock, the newspaper said.

As with the Bernard Madoff case, the scandal surrounding billionaire R. Allen Stanford now seems clear and obvious in hindsight. Yet Stanford managed to run his alleged scheme even while the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators had him on their radar screens and investigated his businesses. Stanford wasn’t charged until last week.

From his tiny accounting firm’s office near a North London fish-and-chips shop to certificates of deposit promising outsized returns sold by a bank in Antigua, ample warning signs over the years suggested Stanford’s business wasn’t what it seemed.

US Airways is acknowledging as much, planning to announce Monday that free beverage service will resume on March 1 on board its planes.

The change, detailed in a memo to employees of the Tempe, Ariz.-based carrier sent Sunday evening by Chief Executive Doug Parker, reverses part of the a la carte business model the airline has trumpeted over the last year.

With the sale, the department said it will have “the necessary liquidity” to compensate for global funding sources that have dried up over the past year.

The funding agreement is part of a $20 billion long-term bond program launched Sunday.

Donald Trump quit as chairman of the casino company he once ran, and wants his name off the three casinos that have been synonymous with Atlantic City for decades, now that they’re in bankruptcy for the third time.

The Tropicana Casino and Resort will file for bankruptcy next month, and Resorts Atlantic City – the first casino in New Jersey – could also become the first to be foreclosed on.

Delphi Corp., which has been under bankruptcy protection since 2005, has asked a judge to allow it to cancel the benefits as soon as April 1, so the Troy, Mich., company can save more than $70 million a year and take more than $1.1 billion in liabilities off its balance sheet.

More than 75 Delphi Corp. retirees like Shade have written directly to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, begging him to keep them from joining the ranks of the uninsured. Attorneys representing at least three groups of retirees have filed formal objections to the plan.

Increased concerns about fuel prices and global warming in recent years have revived interest in marine highways from the Erie Canal to the Chesapeake Bay to the coastal waters off Oregon, Massachusetts and Texas.

Proponents envision further expansion of the country’s 25,000 miles of navigational waterways by making greater use of the coasts and inland routes, such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

Those finance industry workers still standing after the brutal banking collapses of the past year had to contend with a major slash in bonus pay – with many losing as much as one-third of their total compensation. Then the Obama administration imposed a pay cap of $500,000 on certain senior executives whose companies receive substantial bailout money.

Now, analysts anticipate pay will sink even further, and some question whether the shift could permanently downsize the high-flying culture of Wall Street.

That technology is the prize in Europe, where gas production has declined and where an international utility dispute recently left people in more than a dozen European countries shivering in unheated homes.

Europe’s natural gas supply is routed through Ukraine from Russia. Russia supplies about one-quarter of the EU’s natural gas, with 80 percent of it shipped through Ukraine. A rift between the two nations left more than a dozen European countries with little or no gas for two weeks last month.

State Grid Corp. says it began operation in January of a 1 million-volt commercial power line, which is much more powerful than the 765,000-volt systems used in the United States and elsewhere. It said “ultra-high voltage” transmission systems will be able to link cities to distant hydroelectric dams from Brazil to Africa.

“This is a milestone in the history of the power industry,” boasted a State Grid vice president, Lu Jian.

The Dow breached a six-year low in the holiday-shortened week amid mounting fears that the White House would nationalize banks, thus wiping out shareholders.

Stocks pared losses in the final hours of trading on Friday after the White House said it strongly believed in a privately held bank system.

The Sonntag newspaper said it had surveyed the 246 members of the upper and lower houses of parliament and 23 said they wanted Peter Kurer to go, while 16 of them also thought Chief Executive Marcel Rohner should step down.

“I am disappointed by the whole UBS leadership. Communication is lacking. The top management no longer feels what moves the people. Peter Kurer should take the consequences,” Thomas Hurter from the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) told the paper.

With U.S. stocks closing at 6-1/2-year lows on Friday on fears big banks will be nationalized, Bernanke will likely be pressed on government plans to clean up the financial sector when he delivers the Fed’s semiannual monetary policy report to Congress in two days of testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In addition, the Fed chief will face the challenge of making the case that the U.S. central bank, which has chopped interest rates to near zero and flooded markets with hundreds of billions of dollars, still has the ammunition to pull the economy out of its worst downturn since the early 1980s.

European Union leaders met in Berlin to forge a common approach to the global economic downturn that they can take to a meeting in April of the G20, a group of rich and big emerging economies charged with reforming the rules of world finance.

They backed a doubling of funds for the International Monetary Fund, which has spent billions of dollars in recent months shoring up economies in eastern Europe and elsewhere.

The Sunday Telegraph also said the bank would establish a new division that would sit within RBS but which will be ring-fenced from the rest of the group. RBS declined to comment.

The Financial Times newspaper reported on Saturday that RBS would also unveil up to 20,000 job losses as it reports results on February 26.

Shares in ING, which has already received Dutch government aid, fell to a more than 16-year low on Friday on concern it might miss debt interest payments with traders citing talk that the group could be nationalized.

“ING has major activities in America,” Jan Hommen, who will take over the group in April, told the Financieele Dagblad newspaper. “On that basis, I would like to inquire about the current U.S. aid programs.”

Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.

If 25,000 workers at Opel and a similar number at supplier firms lost their jobs, there would be a high price to pay in terms of unemployment benefits and loss of tax revenue, Peer Steinbruck told ARD television.

“Would it not be more logical to provide aid (to the company) so that these people can continue to earn their living?” he asked.

From handheld stun and smoke grenades to fearsome armoured vehicles, a full range of deadly armaments is on display in the International Defence Exhibition and Conference on a site the size of around 15 football pitches.

Nearly 900 exhibitors from 50 countries are taking part in the biennial event which has expanded since the last time it was held, in 2007, with extra features including a newly-dredged area of quay for warships and naval craft.

Fairfax, which publishes the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne, said the result for the six months ended December 28 compared with a net profit of 196.0 million a year earlier.

It included a non-cash impairment charge of 447.5 million Australian dollars as the group wrote down the values of its mastheads, licences and goodwill across all its publishing and broadcast businesses.

“If we’re talking about Canadian taxpayer dollars, we do want to have some specifics about what exactly is going to be going on in Canada,” Clement told broadcaster CTV’s Question Period.

Chrysler was expected to submit a restructuring plan for its Canadian operations by a Friday deadline, but instead offered the same proposal previously handed to US officials, with a new cover letter.

“We have had very good relationships with French companies,” the minister told AFP in an interview.

“I am willing to enter into contacts with the French nuclear agency and to start to build a nuclear power plant, because the future is nuclear,” he said. “This is my perspective.”

“Old school Luxembourgers say that without banking secrecy, our country would not have gained such importance as a financial centre,” Jean Asselborn, who is also minister for foreign affairs and immigration, told the Swiss newspaper Sonntag.

“But in the 21st century, banking secrecy cannot be the only instrument with which Luxembourg drives its economy. Therefore, we need perhaps to redefine banking secrecy and little by little to expand on the advantage of competence,” he said.

“By continuing to support American Treasury instruments the Chinese are recognising our interconnection. We are truly going to rise or fall together,” Clinton said at the US embassy shortly before leaving Beijing.

Clinton, wrapping up her first overseas trip as secretary of state, said continued Chinese purchases of treasuries were essential to financing the massive 787 billion dollar US stimulus plan.

Jolie and Brad Pitt looked very much the part of the red carpet’s golden couple at the Kodak Theatre in classic, almost retro, styles. She wore a black sweetheart-neck strapless gown by Elie Saab, accessorized with green drop earrings, and he wore a classic bow tie.

Penn, in Giorgio Armani, also perfectly matched his wife, Robin Wright Penn. Vanessa Hudgens, in a black Marchesa gown with black and white tulle flowers on the bodice and dangling platinum, diamond and vintage coral earrings by Cathy Waterman, and Zac Efron, in Dolce & Gabanna, were the next-generation supercouple.

Within an hour, police found a second bomb and detonated it safely. Security officials said three people were in custody.

“We were serving our customers as usual, and all of a sudden there was a large sound,” said Magdy Ragab, 42, a waiter at a nearby cafe. “We saw heavy gray smoke and there were people running everywhere … Some people were injured by the stampede, not the shrapnel.”

Dung inaugurated the more than 2.5-billion-dollar Dung Quat refinery live on evening prime-time television, an indication of its importance to the country’s communist leaders.

“It’s a key project of national importance,” Dung told more than 1,000 guests at the facility in central Quang Ngai province amid much fanfare and tight security.

Some Tibetan parts of Sichuan and neighboring Gansu province erupted into violence after protests in Lhasa, regional capital of Tibet in far-western China, in which the government says 19 people died, though exiled groups say the number was much higher.

This year’s anniversary is extra sensitive as 2009 also marks the 50th anniversary of flight into exile of Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

The detainee, Binyam Mohamed, who has been in U.S. custody for nearly seven years, was held and interrogated in Pakistan and Morocco before being sent to Guantanamo, the Times reported. His release to Britain, news of which was leaked to the Times by his lawyers and British officials, ends an 18-month stand-off between the Washington and London.

It does not end an effort by Mohamed and his lawyers to obtain photographs Mohamed said were taken by an American woman showing injuries he contends were inflicted by torture in the course of interrogation.

Public support for 68-year-old Aso, already slumping after policy flip-flops and gaffes, took another hit when close ally Shoichi Nakagawa quit as finance minister last week after being forced to deny he was drunk at a G7 news conference in Rome.

Some in Aso’s own conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have called for him to be replaced ahead of a general election that must be held by October, although Japan has already had three premiers since the last election in 2005.

Queensland is Rudd’s home state and heavily reliant on mining, putting it on the front line of the global financial crisis as export demand tumbles and jobs are shed. State polls were not due until September but unemployment is expected to worsen by then.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who belongs to Rudd’s ruling Labor party, said in a video statement posted on her personal Web site that Queensland had been hit hard and fast by the crisis and voters should choose the government they wanted to deal with it.

As the overseer of the first sustained American aid effort launched in the city eight years after the U.S. intervention that drove the Taliban from power, the 32-year-old artillery officer is having to master skills that he’s not been taught by the military.

But those skills are crucial to the Obama administration’s plan to end the Taliban insurgency in part by delivering on unfulfilled U.S. vows to lift ordinary Afghans out of the crush of poverty and illiteracy.

The two ex-bodyguards said Sunni parliament member Mohammed al Dayni ordered them to carry out a 2007 attack on a Green Zone cafeteria in which a suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest. One lawmakers died and 22 others were wounded.

“They admitted and confessed to committing many crimes and terrorist attacks against the Iraqi people,” Maj. Gen. Qassim al Moussawi said at a news conference.

Officials point to an agenda stretching from the global economic crisis to Afghanistan and North Korea as reasons for Tuesday’s meeting, which comes just a month after Obama took office and is his first with a foreign leader at the White House.

But many analysts agree the main aim is to soothe Tokyo’s niggling worries over its place as Washington’s top ally in Asia.