Rockhopper has awarded almost £1m in early bonuses to four executives after finding oil in the Falkland Islands - before key tests on the flow have been completed.

Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul owner of The Times, The Sun and the News of The World, took a 6pc pay cut to $16.8m (£10.9m) last year, his smallest pay packet since 2003.

Another oil rig has exploded in the Gulf of Mexico - just over four months since BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank extended its liquidity safety net for vulnerable euro zone banks into next year, delaying its exit from crisis measures for now as it urged caution about the economic recovery.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?a=uDljOgtBPIQ:CCrZRp6Kfr4:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?a=uDljOgtBPIQ:CCrZRp6Kfr4:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?i=uDljOgtBPIQ:CCrZRp6Kfr4:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?a=uDljOgtBPIQ:CCrZRp6Kfr4:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?i=uDljOgtBPIQ:CCrZRp6Kfr4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Reuters/UKBusinessNews/~4/uDljOgtBPIQ" height="1" width="1"/

Bob Geldof, the former Boomtown Rats singer, is to become the frontman for a new $750m (£487m) private equity fund that will invest in Africa.

American International Group (AIG) has galvanised a record eleven investment banks from around the world to secure the successful float of its Asian arm in choppy market conditions.

Eaga, the £250m energy efficiency company, said it is in talks to access 250,000 roofs for installing solar panels, as it revealed a 10pc increase in full-year pre-tax profits.

A 'Mexican' in green pants has been credited with helping boost Go-Ahead's Southern Railway franchise, as the transport group reported better-than-expected profits.

Tim Martin, the JD Wetherspoon boss, has launched a startling attack on Diageo and threatened to boycott the drink giant's products if it maintains its 'anti-pub' stance on alcohol taxation.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said he was partly to blame for leaving the wrong impression that the central bank could have saved Lehman Brothers from failure in 2008.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?a=pmM4Bdsqwmc:I7tkBAyFyTI:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?a=pmM4Bdsqwmc:I7tkBAyFyTI:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?i=pmM4Bdsqwmc:I7tkBAyFyTI:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?a=pmM4Bdsqwmc:I7tkBAyFyTI:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?i=pmM4Bdsqwmc:I7tkBAyFyTI:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Reuters/UKBusinessNews/~4/pmM4Bdsqwmc" height="1" width="1"/

Carluccio's, the Italian restaurant chain, has agreed to a £90.3m takeover offer from Landmark, the Middle Eastern retail and leisure group.

Hedge fund manager RAB Capital surprised investors yesterday with the shock of resignation of its chief executive as the company fights to halt a decline in its assets.

Precious metal mining stocks were in the doldrums as City analysts forecast an end to a period of "systemic risk" triggered by the banking crisis.

Cyanobacteria survived strong UV exposure for a billion years ndash; the secret to their success could be key to new sunscreens and "anti-ageing" productsimg width='1' height='1' src='http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/d5d9f88/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=Ancient+bacteria+could+improve+anti-ageing+cosmeticslink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fdn19392-ancient-bacteria-could-improve-antiageing-cosmetics.html%3FDCMP%3DOTC-rss%26nsref%3Donline-news" target="_blank"img src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Ancient+bacteria+could+improve+anti-ageing+cosmeticslink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fdn19392-ancient-bacteria-could-improve-antiageing-cosmetics.html%3FDCMP%3DOTC-rss%26nsref%3Donline-news" target="_blank"img src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" border="0" //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/78869489174/u/60/f/10897/c/749/s/224239496/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/78869489174/u/60/f/10897/c/749/s/224239496/a2.img" border="0"//a

A growing number of New York sky-scrapers switch off their lights at night to help reduce the number of migratory birds hitting the buildings.

Foster's Group, the Australian drinks company, has been hit by the resignation of its finance director in the midst of the demerger of its wine and beer businesses.

Good business shares on the African continent.

Pernod Ricard expects sales in Europe and the US to improve this year, as it spends more on marketing and the world economy continues to recover.

There is much more to the cosmos than meets the eye. Astrophysicist bMichael Rowan-Robinson/b explores what invisible rays from radio to gamma have shown usimg width='1' height='1' src='http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/d5d1c8f/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=Instant+Expert%3A+The+unseen+universelink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Fspecial%2Finstant-expert-the-unseen-universe%3FDCMP%3DOTC-rss%26nsref%3Donline-news" target="_blank"img src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Instant+Expert%3A+The+unseen+universelink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Fspecial%2Finstant-expert-the-unseen-universe%3FDCMP%3DOTC-rss%26nsref%3Donline-news" target="_blank"img src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" border="0" //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/78869406194/u/60/f/10897/c/749/s/224205967/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/78869406194/u/60/f/10897/c/749/s/224205967/a2.img" border="0"//a

LONDON (Reuters) - A sweetened private equity takeover proposal worth almost 250 million pounds has won over Spice Plc , Britain's biggest supplier of water meters.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?a=U-N_bP96Du8:CiWAIyjcOSw:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?a=U-N_bP96Du8:CiWAIyjcOSw:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?i=U-N_bP96Du8:CiWAIyjcOSw:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?a=U-N_bP96Du8:CiWAIyjcOSw:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Reuters/UKBusinessNews?i=U-N_bP96Du8:CiWAIyjcOSw:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Reuters/UKBusinessNews/~4/U-N_bP96Du8" height="1" width="1"/