At least 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers from customers in the United States, Britain and Canada were stolen over a period of several years from the computers of TJX, the discount retail giant disclosed in a regulatory filing last week.

The United States and South Korea struggled to save a proposed free trade agreement in extended high-level talks late Sunday.

President George W. Bush said Saturday that the United States was willing to make substantial cuts in farm subsidies to achieve a global free trade deal but those concessions could not be one-sided.

Britain's biggest pharmacy chain, Alliance Boots, opened its books to its deputy chairman and a private equity firm after they raised their proposed bid by 4 percent to ?10 billion ($19.7 billion), the company said Friday.

Texas Pacific Group made a 3.4 billion euro ($4.5 billion) bid approach for Iberia on Friday, in a development that analysts say could trigger other bids for the Spanish airline.

Citigroup is on the lookout for acquisitions in Germany and could swoop on a big bank, said Sue Harnett, Citigroup's head of German operations.

Let that be a lesson. Even before Britain's politicians had finished saying sorry for depriving millions of their liberty last Sunday, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, 15 Britons found themselves deprived of their liberty by the Iranian government. When will Prime Minister Tony Blair ever learn that, in international relations, nice guys finish last?

In a song cataloguing the ills of contemporary Russia, sardonic balladeer Timur Shaov sings about Russians who choose to leave the country, cautioning them: ""London is not elastic, we won't all fit there.""

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Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov called Friday for a Constitutional amendment that would allow President Vladimir Putin to stay in office after his second term ends.