AFP - German insurance giant Allianz is in "advanced talks" on the future of its Dresdner Bank unit, "that may or may not lead to a deal," it said Friday in a brief statement to financial markets.

AP - Gustav became a hurricane again on Friday and moved through the Cayman Islands, the start of a buildup that could take it to the U.S. Gulf Coast as a fearsome Category-3 storm three years after Hurricane Katrina.

AFP - Former Bank of Japan governor Toshihiko Fukui, who stepped down in March, is set to become a member of Matsushita Electric Industrial's advisory panel, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

AP - Power-sharing talks over a unity government resumed Friday as President Robert Mugabe's government made good on a promise to allow aid agencies to resume operations in economically shattered Zimbabwe.

AP - Thai police fired tear gas at thousands of right-wing protesters besieging their headquarters Friday, while demonstrators outside the capital disrupted air and rail service in a growing campaign to unseat the prime minister.

AP - Georgia severed diplomatic ties with Moscow on Friday to protest the presence of Russian troops on its territory. Russia said the move would only make things worse.

AP - Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic made a defiant stand before a U.N. court preparing to try him on genocide charges, refusing to enter pleas Friday and branding the tribunal a NATO proxy out to "liquidate" him.

AP - Pakistan's presidential front-runner has moved into a tightly guarded government compound over security fears, officials said Friday as a militant campaign against the government led to more violence in the country's volatile northwest.