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China Solar Giant Faces Glare of U.S. Trade Row

In the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi, home to the world's biggest maker of solar panels, labor is so cheap that workers carry out jobs by hand while machines designed to perform the same tasks sit idle.

The low cost of labor, coupled with the massive scale of production at its 14,000-person plant, have enabled China's Suntech to become the global industry leader in just a decade.

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No New Jobs in Canada in February

Employment in Canada was mostly unchanged in February, but a decline in the number of people looking for work pushed the jobless rate down slightly to 7.4 percent, a government agency said Friday.

Analysts had predicted that 15,000 new jobs would be created in the month, while the unemployment rate would remain at the previous month's level of 7.6 percent.

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Greece Clinches Landmark Debt Swap

Greece said on Friday it had clinched a "historic" debt swap, opening the way for an urgent second bailout to save the country from bankruptcy and the Eurozone from a new crisis.

Private creditors tendered bonds amounting to 83.5 percent of debt covered by a deal to cancel half the amount owed -- a write-off worth 107 billion Euros ($142 billion) on the basis of full acceptance.

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Sports Cars Go Green as Standards Tighten

Sports cars, reputed for being energy guzzlers, are now trying to boost their green credentials as they seek to attract environmentally conscious consumers and meet new climate standards.

At the Geneva Motor Show, Ferrari conscientiously draped signs on its new models saying that the vehicles' carbon emissions have been cut by 30 percent.

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Starbucks Launches Pod-Coffee Machine

Starbucks announced Thursday a push into the market for branded single-cup coffee machines to meet the booming market for java brewed from pods.

But its new "Verismo" high-pressure, premium single-cup coffee dispenser will not be ready for the market until late this year, the company said in a statement.

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Air France-KLM Switches into Loss on Fuel Costs

Air France-KLM switched into heavy loss last year owing to high and still rising fuel costs, disruption to traffic from unrest in North Africa and an earthquake in Japan, the firm said on Thursday.

Its figures also showed that the group is suffering from competition from low-cost airlines. The overall outcome was worse than analysts' had expected and shares in the airline fell.

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Hopes for Greek Debt Swap Lift Asian Shares

Rising optimism that Greece's debt swap will be successful boosted Asian shares Thursday while markets were also supported by another batch of strong U.S. jobs data.

The upbeat sentiment supported the euro and dollar against the yen, while the Japanese unit was also pressured by news that the country suffered a record current account deficit in January.

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Forbes: Carlos Slim World's Richest for 3rd Year

Mexico telecoms czar of Lebanese origin Carlos Slim topped the Forbes annual world's richest list, holding the edge over Microsoft's Bill Gates who continued to give away billions of his fortune to charity.

Despite a $6 billion hit to his wealth from slumping stock markets over the past year, Forbes said Slim's $69 billion was enough to keep him on top of its global billionaires list for the third straight year.

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BMW Drives to Record Profits in 2011

German top-of-the-range carmaker BMW said Thursday it powered ahead to new records in unit sales, revenues and profits in 2011 and expected to continue to grow again this year.

BMW said in a statement it booked net profit of 4.907 billion euros ($6.5 billion) in 2011, an increase of 51.3 percent year-on-year, and pre-tax profit rose by 52.1 percent to 7.383 billion euros.

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Facebook Secures $8 Billion Ahead of Public Offer

Facebook has secured $8 billion ahead of the social network's eagerly-anticipated initial public offering (IPO), according to documents provided to U.S. regulators.

The company said it had secured a $5 billion revolving line of credit over three years from a bank consortium including Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, according to documents filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

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