IBT Staff Reporter

Hondurans vote for a new president Sunday in the latest chapter of a months-long political standoff triggered by a coup that has divided the United States from Latin American powers Brazil and Argentina.

Lawmakers urged Iran's government on Sunday to prepare a plan on reducing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), after the U.N. body rebuked Tehran for secretly building a uranium enrichment plant.

The euro zone does not risk the sort of debt problems plaguing Dubai, senior European Union officials said on Sunday.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on Pakistan to take tougher action against al Qaeda and step up its efforts to track down the group's leader Osama bin Laden.

The U.S. military could have captured or killed Osama bin Laden in 2001 if it had launched a concerted attack on his hideout in Afghanistan, according to a report prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The yuan's link to the dollar is problematic for some sectors in the European economy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Sunday, ahead of a summit with Chinese leaders.

Ailing telecom equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks has changed its business focus to increasing its market share, the new chief executive of the venture was quoted as saying on Sunday.

European businesses, growing frustrated at slow progress in the World Trade Organization's Doha round, called on Sunday for the WTO to tackle the negotiation at next week's conference.

A gradual, orderly rise in the yuan against all major floating currencies is in the interest both of China and of the world economy, senior euro zone officials said on Sunday.

News Corp's satellite pay-TV unit Sky Italia sees enormous scope to grow its business and rejected talk of a war with its main rival, its chief executive said in a newspaper interview on Sunday.

Swiss bank UBS is threatening to move its headquarters out of Switzerland if the authorities impose too many new regulations in the wake of the global financial crisis, Swiss weekly paper Sonntag CH said.

Ailing telecom equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks has changed its business focus to increasing its market share, the new chief executive of the venture was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Dubai World has refused to offload assets at fire-sale prices to repay obligations, forcing it to seek a debt standstill, a newspaper report on Sunday quoted an unnamed source at the government-controlled firm as saying.

The euro zone does not risk the sort of debt problems plaguing Dubai, senior European Union officials said on Sunday.

IBM , the world's biggest technology services company, is expected to announce this week the acquisition of database security start-up Guardium for $225 million, Israeli financial newspaper TheMarker reported.

China will expand schemes that give consumers a discount if they trade in old cars and household appliances for new ones, according to Vice Commerce Minister Jiang Zengwei.

The Treasury Department wants lenders and companies that process monthly mortgage payments to do more to rework troubled home mortgage loans and will announce new measures on Monday aimed at achieving that goal, a department spokeswoman said on Saturday.

The Obama administration plans to announce on Monday a campaign to press mortgage companies to reduce payments for many more struggling homeowners, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

In a worrisome sign for retailers, data released on Saturday showed that sales rose a scant 0.5 percent on the traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season despite early signs of a strong showing.

Black Friday sales rose just 0.5 percent to $10.66 billion after rising 3 percent in 2008, ShopperTrak said on Saturday, a rise that may disappoint investors who had expected retailers to see a bigger boost this year.

A focus on bargains pulled U.S. shoppers into stores and onto websites over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, but many said they would stick to their budgets and avoid purchases if they couldn't find a good deal.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa will meet next week, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, as a surging yen adds to debate over central bank policy.

Celebrity blogging website, TMZ, reported Saturday that professional golfer Tiger Woods did not suffer facial lacerations from a car accident but they were rather inflicted by his wife Elin Nordegren.

Rescuers have retrieved 32 bodies, including at least 12 children, and are searching for scores of people missing after an overcrowded ferry sank in a river along the Bangladesh coast, police and witnesses said on Saturday.

A major international conference on Afghanistan, to be held in London in January, will aim to set the conditions for a gradual transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan control, Britain said on Saturday.

The death toll from the heaviest rainfall to hit Saudi Arabia in years rose to 98 on Saturday as more bodies were recovered, with dozens more expected to be found, a rescue services spokesman said.

Russia's domestic intelligence service Saturday said a train disaster that killed dozens and injured nearly 100 was caused by a bomb.

A Zimbabwean-registered cargo plane en route to Kyrgyzstan crashed on take-off in Shanghai on Saturday, killing three U.S. crew on board and triggering a fire, state media and a U.S. spokesman said.

Nokia needs to speedily boost its offering of mobile internet solutions, marketing head Anssi Vanjoki told a German magazine and did not rule out a sale of its core handset manufacturing business in the long term.