Munich - German mortgage bank Hypo Real Estate has been rescued in a last-minute deal by a consortium of banks to resolve a refinancing squeeze it faced, the group said early on Monday.

Emergency talks yielded a result with a group of German banks extending credit that will tide the group over. Hypo did not name the banks or say how much of a loan it got.

Hypo was earlier in urgent talks with German banking regulator Bafin and the finance ministry seeking a solution for its problems

Tokyo - Japan has reached basic agreements with Vietnam and Switzerland on separate economic partnership accords, a top government spokesman said Monday.

Switzerland would be the first industrialized nation to enter such an agreement with Japan. The two nations launched talks on an economic partnership agreement (EPA) in May 2007.

With Vietnam, Japan has found basic common ground on most issues to free bilateral trade since the two nations began negotiations in January 2007, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said.

Tokyo asked both nations to reduce import tariffs on industrial materials such as automobiles and machineries.

Paris - French energy giant Electricite de France (EDF) is to purchase British Energy Group after both boards agreed on a price, EDF said Wednesday in a statement.

According to the agreed deal, EDF will pay 12.5 billion pounds (15.6 billion euros, or 22.9 billion dollars) for the group, which owns eight of Britain's 10 nuclear power reactors.

The offer, equal to 774 pence per share of British Energy, represents a premium of more than 35 per cent over its closing middle price on March 14, when talks began between the two companies, and of nearly 7 per cent over Tuesday's closing middle price.

Washington, Sept. 24 : Elected conservatives, answerable to their constituencies back home and looking at less than two months before the general election, are saying they no longer believe the Bush administration.

"It''s a sad fact, but Americans can no longer trust the economic information they are getting from this administration," said Senator Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican.

The direct target of conservative wrath is President Bush''s Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., whose plan to bail out Wall Street is being negotiated with Democrats who are turning the plan into a Christmas tree of added forms of relief - including home mortgages on the verge of default, car loans and no one knows what else as the chaos grows.

New York  - The US chemical concern DuPont announced Tuesday that it was elevating executive vice president Ellen Kullman to the position of president as of October 1 and chief executive officer effective January 1, 2009.

The 52-year-old Kullman, who has worked for DuPont since 1988, is to replace Charles O Holliday Jr, a 38-year veteran of the 206-year- old company based in Wilmington, Delaware. Holliday has been CEO from 1998.

Kullman, in her role as group vice president of the company's safety and protection unit from 2002 to 2006, helped increase revenues in the unit from 3.5 billion dollars to 5.5 billion dollars.

Dubai - Five Dubai-based companies are among 16 firms and individuals accused by the United States of exporting items to Iran that could be used to make weapons and explosives, a news report said Saturday.

The traders are alleged to have purchased US-made "dual use" goods and transported them to Iran via the United Arab Emirates, Britain, Malaysia, Germany and Singapore, the Abu Dhabi-based The National newspaper said.

While Iran is subject to UN sanctions related primarily to material used in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, it is also covered by unilateral US sanctions, which prohibit the sale of most goods of US origin to the Islamic republic.