Africa/International

Three of the BBC language services are going off air later, as a result of cuts to the World Service budget. The BBC Serbian and Latin American services end more than 70 years of broadcasting on radio, but the Latin American service…

Google Inc., long considered the gold standard of Internet search, is changing the secret formula it uses to rank Web pages as it struggles to combat websites that have been able to game its system. The Internet giant, which handles nearly…

The Government has so far paid more than £20 million in one-off redundancy payments as part of the "bonfire of the quangos", figures have revealed. The statistics, obtained by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act, showed there have…

Brazil's two biggest companies have posted record profits for 2010, in the latest sign of the South American nation's growing economic might. The oil giant Petrobras - which is partly state-owned - made $20bn (£12.4bn). The mining company…

The Obama administration froze assets of the Libyan government, leader Moammar Gadhafi and four of his children Friday, just hours after it closed the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli and evacuated its remaining staff. U.S. officials said…

Two Ghanaian languages of the Akan stock, Twi and Fante will be added to the different languages that will be printed on census forms for the United Kingdom. The UK population census to be held on March 27, 2011, will include the Twi and…

The Swiss government ordered the country's banks to block any assets belonging to the regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi, marking Bern's fourth such freeze in the last month involving assets that may belong to African and Middle Eastern…

Deutsche Bank has been fined 1bn won ($887,000) after South Korea's regulators said its staff manipulated the country's stock market. The fine is the largest ever handed down by Korea's stock exchange, KRX. On Thursday, the Financial…

Oil prices have retreated from Thursday's multi-year highs amid optimism that crude producers can offset any drop in supply caused by the unrest in Libya. Brent crude was trading at $112.65 a barrel, after almost breaking through the $120…

Workers clocked up around £29bn worth of overtime at an average of seven extra hours each week, a new study has revealed. The TUC report says a unprecedented 5.26m people worked additional time for free last year - the highest number since…