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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – President Barack Obama has issued an executive order freezing all assets of the Iranian government and financial institutions being held in the U.S.

In the order, which takes effect Monday, Obama declared that all property and interests in property of the Government of Iran, including the Central Bank of Iran, that are in the United States are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in. Iranian property that comes to the U.S. or taken possession by any U.S. person were also ordered frozen.

Obama directed the Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State and other U.S. government agencies to implement the order.

The President cited attempts by Iran’s central bank and other banks’ to conceal transactions of sanctioned parties and the weakness of the Islamic country’s anti-money laundering regulations as reason for issuing the order.

But the main aim of the latest sanction is to cripple Iran’s nuclear program that Washington believes is intended to make weapons of mass destruction. Tehran has repeatedly denied that it is building a nuclear bomb saying the nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The United Nations and the European Union had also imposed arms and economic embargo against Iran in an attempt to force Tehran to stop enriching uranium.

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Los Angeles, CA, United States (AHN) – “Underworld Awakening” came out on top of the weekend box office, taking in $25.4 million in its debut.

The film is a 3-D fourth installment of the popular vampires vs. werewolves franchise. “Awakening,” starring Kate Beckinsale, took in more than its 2009 predecessor “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans,” which started with $20.8 million, and did not feature Beckinsale.

Taking the No. 2 spot with $19.1 million was George Lucas’ “Red Tails,” a $58-million tale starring Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. that chronicles WWII’s African-American Tuskegee airmen.

In third place was “Contraband,” starring Mark Wahlberg and also featuring Beckinsale. The film topped the box office last week. Its 10-day total is roughly $46.1 million.

“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” the 9/11 drama adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, finished in a disappointing fourth, with a lukewarm $10.5 million. The Warner Bros. flick stars Oscar winner Sandra Bullock.

Rounding out the top five was “Haywire.” The Steven Soderberg film, featuring mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano, took in a dismal $9 million.

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Los Angeles, CA, United States (AHN) – Warner Bros. will extend the time customers have to wait to watch movies on DVDs from services such as Netflix to 56 days, more than twice as long as the current delay.

The move is a bid to bolster flagging DVD sales as well as fledging online movie service UlraViolet, which lets buyers of DVDs or movie downloads watch those movies online using computers, smartphones or tablets.

Warner Bros. has told movie rental companies that it wants the eight-week delay a standard part of its deals. Netflix has agreed to the terms, but Redbox has not yet signed on, the website AllThingsDigital reported.

Coinstar, parent company of Redstar, has deals with Sony Pictures, Lions Gate Entertainment and Paramount Studios to obtain DVDs for rental the same day they are released for sale.

In 2010, Warner Bros imposed a four-week delay on rental outlets.

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Tokyo, Japan (AHN) – In an attempt to reduce spending on national defense and strengthen domestic arms industry, Japan on Tuesday eased self-imposed arms exports ban.

The liberalization will allow hundreds of Japanese companies to take part in multinational projects of developing weapons for the first time in several decades.

“Under the new standards, Japan will be able to transport military equipment for missions of peace-building and international cooperation,” Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba told reporters.

“This will mean that Japan can now address international peace cooperation and global challenges such as terrorism and piracy more proactively and effectively,” he added.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – U.S. stocks cheered strong retail sales over the long Thanksgiving weekend and early forecasts of a strong showing for Cyber Monday with a strong rally.

With less than an hour in the trading day, stocks were off earlier highs but still boasted impressive gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 220 points, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 27 points and the tech heavy NASDAQ jumped 70 points.

Retail sales broke records over the long holiday weekend and early estimates are the Cyber Monday sales are expected to climb 20 percent over last year.

The broad based rally included retailers, financials, and technology shares. Best Buy rose nearly 3 percent. Macy soared almost 5 percent and Apple was better by more than 3 percent.

Also giving stocks room to run was news out of Europe that progress was being made in the ever growing and lengthy euro zone sovereign debt crisis.

While some analysts called the rally a technical bounce and warn markets still face numerous risks, investors welcomed the much needed gains.

Commodities were also strong. Oil rose 88 cents to $97.71 a barrel. Gold closed solidly higher on bargain hunting, rising $29 to $1709 a troy ounce, and silver, the grey metal, closed up $1.08 an ounce to settle the day at $32.06.

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Seattle, WA, United States (AHN) – Starbucks has stopped charging $1.50 for orders of coffee beans less than a pound in stores in the United States.

The Seattle-based company made the decision after being fined by the the Massachusetts Division of Standards for not disclosing the hidden charge to customers.

The fee was ended on Nov. 7 nationwide. It was charged whenever customers ordered coffee beans less than the one-pound bags readily available in Starbucks stores.

Coffee beans cost $11.95 a pound, which should be half a pound at $5.98. Customers who bought half a pound, however, paid $7.48 without being informed of the added cost.

Starbucks, like other companies, can charge additional fees for its products and services so long as it indicated these fees on price lists or informs customers before purchase.

The $1.50 extra charge by Starbucks violated consumer protection laws in Massachusetts against “unfair or deceptive” practices.

The Massachusetts Division of Standards said it became aware of the violation in August. It proceeded to investigate by buying coffee beans at Starbucks stores in Andover, Concord, Reading and other areas. Each time, the store charged the undisclosed fee.

The agency fined the stores it visited a total of $1,575. In response, Starbucks informed officials it would stop charging customers the fee in stores in Massachusetts and all other states.

“Additional fees have to be clearly and conspicuously disclosed to the consumer before the purchase,” Barbara Anthony, undersecretary of the agency’s Office of Consumer Affairs, said in a statement.

Massachusetts officials estimate about 75,000 customers in the state have paid for the extra fee without being aware of it.

A spokesman for the coffee chain, Alan Hilowitz, told the Boston Globe the $1.50 was for “additional labor and packaging” required for orders of half-pound coffee beans.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 2008 decision that allowed patients to file a parallel claim against manufacturers of medical devices.

With the ruling, the court rejected an appeal by Stryker Corporation against a lawsuit foiled by Illinois resident Margaret Bausch who got a replacement hip six days after the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) issued a warning about problems at Stryker’s manufacturing plant.

In seeking to dismiss Bausch’s lawsuit, Stryker cited a 2008 Supreme Court ruling that patients cannot file state-law product liability suits over products that went through FDA review.

However, a Chicago Federal Appeals court allowed Bausch’s suit based on the exception made the Supreme Court which allowed parallel claims.

The FDA investigated Stryker’s facility in Ireland and informed the company in March 2007 that it must correct manufacturing deficiencies. In 2008, Stryker recalled hip and knee replacements manufactured at its Ireland plant, including the one implanted on Bausch, requiring her to undergo a second surgery to have the defective device replaced.

Stryker, based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, reported last month that its profit went down 3 percent in the third quarter due to cost related to recent acquisitions. As a result, Stryker’s earnings went down to $327 million from $337 million after it purchased former rival Orthovita, the neurovascular business of Boston Scientific Corporation and Memometal Technologies, which makes foot and hand implants.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – Just days after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, the U.S. company has won a legal battle against Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC.

HTC had lodged a patent infringement complaint against Apple last year and sought a ban on import of Apple products.

However, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Tuesday said in its verdict that the American company did not violate the rules – an announcement that prompted the fall of HTC shares to as much as 6 percent.

HTC had charged Apple violated its patents relating to data protection, contact information storage and power supply management.

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Armonk, NY, United States (AHN) – International Business Machines Corp. is bent on retaining its hold as the number two most valuable company in the world by expanding its $22.5-billion software business.

IBM Senior Vice President Steve Mills says the firm, which has sold its hardware business and shifted to software development, plans to spend $100 million to $300 million to buy mid-sized firms.

The expansion aims to add another $20 billion in annual revenues by 2015, which would mean that IBM must double or triple the pace of sales growth at companies it plans to buy.

IBM’s success in software development, according to the company’s chief technology officer, Dr. Jai Menon, is providing clients with solutions that are flexible to meet their needs such as computing power, storage and memory requirements.

Menon said the IT industry needs to come up with data-centric computers from the current processing-centric computers that could extract and find information in data to aid human cognition. He explained that would involve moving away from machines that compute to those that could extract information from large amounts of unstructured data.

Software accounted for 86.9 percent of IBM’s gross margins out of the $99.9 billion the IT company earned in sales last year.

Since 2006, IBM has purchased about 50 software companies in areas such as data analysis, e-commerce, supply-chain management and computer security.

IBM last week surpassed Microsoft as the second most valuable company after its market capitalization reached $214 billion.

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Athens, Greece (AHN) – Greece is teetering towards a default on its international loans, prompting Greek officials to seek the advice of European and International Monetary Fund officials to measures the financially challenged nation could do to speed up the release of its $11 billion anticipated aid.

The reply of European economic officials on Monday was that Athens must make deeper and faster budget cuts and economic reforms.

In the event of a Greek default, the ones to be hit hardest would be German banks Hypo Real Estate Holding and WestLB which jointly hold more than 50 percent of Greek debts held by Deutsche banks. Hypo has $12 billion (EUR 8.76 billion) and WestLB has $1.66 billion (EUR 1.21 billion).

In contrast Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, the two largest lenders in Germany, hold only a total of $4.6 billion (EUR 3.35 billion) Greek debt.

A default would be the second burden for German taxpayers, who backed up Hypo and WestLB during the 2008 global financial crisis to prevent their collapse. Hypo and WestLB are now both state-owned banks.

Despite European leader’s attempt to convince the global markets that Greece and other eurozone nations hit by the debt contagion would not default, the markets are skeptical and hiked borrowing costs for governments and banks in the 17-nation one-currency zone.

To hold down interest rates pay by Italy, which was downgraded by Standard & Poor’s on Monday, and Spain, the European Central Bank purchased over $200 billion in government bonds.

The IMF mission head who visited Greece urged Athens on Monday to speed up its reforms. Although the bailout package previously released by the ECB and IMF to Greece was premised on reduction of state payroll and disposal of inefficient government-owned assets, the embattled Greek government has not delivered on its promise.

Fears of Greece having difficulty qualifying for another round of bailout caused major stock indices in Europe such as Germany’s DAX, France’s CAC and Euro Stoxx to close down by 3 percent on Monday.

The Dow Jones industrial average and S&P’s 500-stock index lost almost 1 percent on the same day.

With the growing fears of a default, Greek 10-year bonds are trading about 80 percent below face value.

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