areas in the west. a general strike on wednesday forced many local businesses to close their doors. u.s. republicanal presidential candidate herman cain is facing more allegations of sexual harassment. the associated press is reporting a third woman has come forward saying cain made sexually suggestive remarks to her back in the 1990s. his campaign says the allegations are baseless. the arab league says syria agreed to end its crackdown on protesters, that s part of a wider initiative which calls for talks with the opposition. the announcement comes as more than two dozen people were reportedly killed in syria on wednesday. those are the top stories from cnn, the world s business leader. i m zain verjee, world business today starts right now. good morning from cnn london, i m nina dos santos, this is world business today. these are the top stories. smiles for the cameras at the group of 20 summit in cannes. behind the scenes the grim threat of a greek euro exit loom
council claims 50,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in february. so far cnn is unable to confirm that figure. rebels are giving gadhafi loyalists until saturday to surrender the town of sirte and others they control. sirte is colonel gadhafi s hometown and one of the places he may be hiding. the ntc says it s trying to avoid bloodshed but threatens an all-out attack if the loyalists fail to disarm. syrian opposition forces say security forces cracked down on anti-government groups around the country. six people reportedly were killed in the city of dara. those are the top stories from cnn the world s news leader. i m zain verjee and world business today starts right now. good morning from cnn london. i m nina dos santos. good afternoon from cnn hong kong. i m andrew stevens. you re watching world business today. the libyan rebels oil and finance minister tells us the country s oil production could be back to full strength within a year. you have b
the u.s. deficit is huge standing at $0 trillion and counting. let s see how the european markets are faring at the moment. they finished mostly lower on friday s session, following news that japan was hit by another big earthquake, this time 7.4 on the richter scale. as you can see, sharp rebounds with the likes of the cac 40 in paris leading the way, up nearly 1% but the ftse in london, up by 0.75% at the moment. in the meantime, when we take a look at the currency markets, the euro and the pound are currently gaining against the u.s. dollar following the u.s. central bank s decision to raise interest rates by 0.25% on thursday. that s the first time they raised rates since back in 2008. rates standing at a historic low for about two or three years. there s good news for japanese exporters as well as the yen has been weakening against the green back. taking a look at those numbers in particular, the euro standing
now 0.8% in the first hours of trading. also we have significant gains for the cac 40 in paris and the zur rich. we ve got irish bank down by about 10%. this follows needs that the irish banks 24 billion euros to survive following the stress test on the irish banking system by a group of independent experts and the country s even allied bank. they ll have to be raising about 13.5 billion euros. as you can see that has some of those markets down, the irish market down. but the allied irish market down by about 10%. not affecting anything here in brittain with the ftse rising about 0.6%. in the meantime the euro and the yen falling, trading at 14149
also the paris cac 40. stock markets in the asia region finished high. it buoyed the shanghai composite by more than 1.33%. this shows growth in the manufacturing sector. meanwhile in hong kong the hang seng also ended the day in positive territory, up by more than 1.2%. just less than. energy stocks were the among the winners there. elsewhere uncertainty continues to weigh on the nikkei which lost some ground today. it ended the session down by half a%. meanwhile australia s main benchmark closed up by about the