Business and Finance news

South Korea’s ruling party forced a long-stalled free trade deal with the United States through parliament Tuesday, enraging opposition lawmakers who blasted their political rivals with tear gas.
South Korean lawmakers voted 151 to 7 in favor of ratifying the landmark trade agreement in a surprise legislative session called by the ruling Grand National Party, parliamentary […]

A former board member of Olympus Corp. said Friday that he launched an online petition to persuade the Japanese company to bring back Michael Woodford, the British executive fired for questioning payments made to cover up huge investment losses.
Koji Miyata, who served on Olympus’ board from 1995 to 2006, told The Associated Press that he […]

TORONTO — Paying with plastic takes on a new meaning today as the Bank of Canada rolls out new $100 bills to replace the cotton-paper blend note.
The $100 is Canada’s first polymer bank note and features a wealth of anti-counterfeiting features such as partially-hidden numbers.
The bill also includes a large, transparent window, transparent text, a […]

Thailand’s energy minister said the flood crisis in Bangkok is likely to drag on for another month, as authorities issued another evacuation advisory in a northern neighborhood and floodwaters inched further into the city’s heart.
Energy Minister Pichai Naripthaphan said, however, that floods may finally begin to subside in the capital by mid-November, according to a […]

Some of the latest developments in the Occupy protests:
GEORGIA
Police arrested 20 people after an Occupy Atlanta protest rally in a city park spilled onto the streets and officers converged on them on motorcycles, riding horseback and in riot gear.
A crowd of several hundred protesters had gathered at Woodruff Park, the scene of about 50 arrests […]

ST. LOUIS

Amgen Inc. is laying off about 380 employees in research and development as it restructures its R&D operations.
The biotech company, based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., says the layoffs are targeted to enable the company to better allocate its research and development resources.
Company spokeswoman Christine Regan says the affected employees were notified Wednesday. They work at […]

MONTREAL

While Research In Motion Ltd. struggles to contain a service outage that’s affecting tens of million of BlackBerry users around the world, its co-chief executives are most conspicuous by their absence.
Neither Jim Balsillie, who was in Dubai Monday at an industry conference when the outage began, nor Mike Lazaridis, the dual CEOs and co-chairmen who […]

Beleaguered music and movie retailer HMV Canada says sales are up since it changed its pricing structure.
It’s looking at launching the country’s first subscription-based digital music service next year.
And it’s considering a move into movie rentals as a way to boost future revenues.
There’s a hole in market since video rental retailer Blockbuster Canada filed for […]