The way to make $100 million dollars on Wall Street, so the old joke goes, is to start with $200 million. Or you could trade oil. In early October, Citigroup sold its commodities-trading division Phibro to energy company Occidental Petroleum. Citi was motivated to dispose of the unit because of pressure from regulators to curtail the pay of Phibro's top trader Andrew Hall, who made $100 million last year, and reportedly has a contract that would award him ...

Nearly nine in 10 Americans say they think Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, according to a new national poll. Eighty-eight percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Tuesday say the Iranian government is attempting to develop nuclear weapons. But it appears that's where agreement ends as the survey indicates there's little consensus on the best approach to addressing the situation -- though the poll does suggest a military response is not as popular as ...

Iranian officials are expected to huddle again with their Western counterparts Wednesday to hammer out a deal about the future of Tehran's nuclear program. A day earlier, talks between the two sides ended on an optimistic note, with the director-general of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency calling them constructive. The meetings are taking place at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The participants include Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh, and officials from France, Russia ...

A $5 million prize to reward good leadership in Africa was dramatically awarded Monday to ... nobody. It was the first time in the three-year history of the Mo Ibrahim Prize that the committee did not name a winner. "The Prize Committee has considered some credible candidates. However, after in-depth review, the Prize Committee could not select a winner," the committee said in a statement. Democratically elected African presidents and prime ministers who have left office within the ...

Iran will move to further enrich its uranium for a research reactor if it cannot obtain the fuel from overseas, semi-official state media reported Saturday. If talks with world powers and the United Nations nuclear watchdog fail, Iran will notify the latter that it will supply fuel for the Tehran reactor, said Ali Shirzadian, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. "The reactor is the major producer of radio medicines in Iran and its current fuel meets its ...

It is midday and Geoff Lawton is hard at work at Zaytuna Farms in New South Wales, Australia. But the real work, he says, is going on inside the center of the compost. "There's lots of things breeding in there," Lawton says. Compost may not seem a sexy subject, but within this steaming pile, life is being created. "There's organisms breathing and dying and reproducing very quickly," he says. "It's all very hot and steamy." That rich soil lays the ...

The Obama administration is working on a substantial sanctions package against Iran in case current diplomatic efforts to curb its nuclear program fail, top officials told Congress on Tuesday. Under Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Levy, who developed some of the existing financial sanctions against Iran under the Bush administration, said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that the "comprehensive" plan would target "key vulnerabilities and fissures" in Iran to show Tehran that it would face "serious costs" for thwarting ...

Some call him the River Maker, others the Rainman of Rajasthan. His real name is Rajendra Singh. His nicknames come from his self-imposed mission to solve his state's water problems, one raindrop at a time. "Today with global warming and climate change so many things are going on. Yes, this is the global problem. This is the modern problem. The solution is indigenous water conservation," Singh says. Singh lives and works in Rajasthan, one of the driest states in India. ...

United Nations inspectors will visit Iran's recently disclosed nuclear power plant on October 25, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency announced Sunday from Tehran. "It is important for us to send out inspectors to do comprehensive verification ... to assure ourselves that it is ... fit for peaceful purposes," Mohamed ElBaradei said. Iran sent shock waves through the international community recently when Tehran wrote a letter to the IAEA revealing the existence of a nuclear enrichment facility near ...

Days after Iran revealed the existence of a second uranium enrichment facility, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency paid the country a visit. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran on Saturday night for two days of talks with Iranian officials, the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency said Saturday. An IAEA spokesman said officials were planning to discuss the new underground facility near the holy Shiite city of Qom. Iran sent ...