New York  - Business partners of the insurance giant AIG have, since the firm was bailed out by the US government in September 2008, received some 50 billion dollars in payments, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Beneficiaries of bail-out funds from the firm number some two dozen, including the Goldman Sachs group and Germany's Deutsche Bank AG, the paper said.

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank each received some 6 billion dollars in payments between September and December 2008, to cover exposures they had at the failing insurer.

New York, Mar 7 : The ongoing global economic meltdown has claimed the loss of another 651,000 jobs in America, boosting the nation''s unemployment rate to 8.1%, its highest figure since 1983.

The Labor Department figures in January had revealed a hike from 7.6%, putting U. S. unemployment at a level not seen since December 1983, when the jobless rate hit 8.3%.

An estimated 4.4 million jobs have vanished in the past 15 months, including 2.6 million in the last four months alone, the federal officials said.

New York, Mar 07 : It seems that singer Chris Brown is trying his best to shun away the bad memories of his alleged attack on Rihanna, as he was spotted leaving a Hollywood bar at 3:45 am.

Brown was escorted by his bodyguards when he left the chic Hollywood bar in the midnight, according to TMZ.

Brown has been charged with allegedly attacking Rihanna and leaving her with horrific injuries.

The charges against him could mean at least a five-year jail term.

New York, March 7: Hip-hop star M. I. A. has denied naming her newborn baby Ickitt on her MySpace page.

She criticised the press for spreading the rumour that she had given the odd name to her little son.

"My baby is not called Ickitt, Pickit or Lickit," the New York Daily News quoted her as writing in all caps.

"Thank you very much to all the Hollywood press. He''s a baby, he don''t need press!" she added.

New York, Mar 7: Wall Street fund manager Bernard Madoff, who is accused of defrauding investors of 50 billion dollars in a massive Ponzi scheme, could plead guilty as early as next week.

Madoff, the high-profile money manager, is expected to plead guilty to federal charges at a hearing on Thursday; FOX News quoted a Justice Department official, as saying.

Victims could speak at the hearing, and there are thousands of them, according to a motion filed in federal court.

New York, Mar 7: Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was hurt and his wife, Susan, has been killed in a car crash about 45 miles south of Harare.

According to officials of Tsvangirai’s political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, the head on collision with a lorry was not a genuine accident. Rumours that the fatal incident was a botched assassination attempt spread quickly in the country, which has a history of political killings.