In a hush-hush deal, the British government just sold its last shares in the country's nuclear weapons plant to a U.S. company. California-based Jacobs Engineering Group paid an undisclosed amount for the government's one-third stake in the only plant in the UK that manufactures nuclear weapons, including Trident warheads. Lockheed Martin owns another third of the plant, and a British business services company the remaining third.

The sale wasn't announced to Parliament, leaving some MPs to speculate that the government sold the plant at below market rates to get some much-needed funds for the Treasury. Critically, it means that all production, design, and decommissioning of nuclear weapons in the UK is privately owned, with U.S. companies having a majority stake.

Photo: Getty Images

One week later, Zaidi-mania shows no sign of slowing down. The Turkish company that makes the shoe Muntadar al-Zaidi threw at President Bush has seen demand for the thick-soled model explode:

Baydan has received orders for 300,000 pairs of the shoessince the attack, more than four times the number his companysold each year since the model was introduced in 1999. Thecompany plans to employ 100 more staff to meet demand, he said.

“Model 271” is exported to markets including Iraq, Iran,Syria and Egypt. Customers in Iraq ordered 120,000 pairs thisweek and some Iraqis offered to set up distribution companiesfor the shoe, Baydan said.

They also claim to be in talks with a U.S. distributor.

Ilker Akgungor/Getty Images

The Sawiris family, which owns Egyptian telecom firm Orascom, has a history of making smart business deals. So maybe they know something the rest of us don't?

An Egyptian company said it will launch 3G mobile telephone service in North Korea on Monday, after winning the contract to build the advanced network in a country where private cell phones are banned. [...]

It was not clear what restrictions, if any, would be imposed on the network, which provides data capabilities as well as phone services. Ordinary North Koreans are forbidden from having cellular phones, and the government maintains strict controls over Internet access.

At a minimum, it's a great opportunity for the world's espionage services.

UPDATE: CrunchGear's Nicholas Deleon comments:

I just find it funny that there's going to be 3G in Pyongyang and I can't so much as get T-Mobile EDGE here in Dutchess County, NY, which is about an hour north of NYC.

Looking for a safe harbor to park your cash? Invest in Korean ramen. Bloomberg:

[South Korea's] economic woes are helping sales of instant noodles called "ramyeon," which typically cost about 68 cents a pot. Sales rose 38 percent in October compared with the same period last year, according to the 24-hour convenience store chain FamilyMart. Shares of Nong Shim, which makes the nation's best-selling brand of ramyeon, gained 17 percent in the past month.

Sales of cigarettes and condoms are up, too.

If you were thinking the place Vladimir Putin calls home, you chose wisely, tovarisch. Russia topped the list of countries whose companies are most likely to pay bribes when doing business abroad. China and Mexico took the silver and bronze. India, dropping from first in the 2006 survey, took fourth followed by Brazil and Italy.

Transparency International, a worldwide coalition dedicated to fighting global corruption, based its 2008 Bribe Payers Index (BPI) on interviews with 2,742 senior business executives from companies "selected on the size of their imports and inflows of foreign direct investment."

Among those on the up and up, Belgium ranked the least likely to engage in bribery, followed by Canada, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The United States managed to squeak in with the top ten "good guys," ranking ninth.

Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

NPR has an interesting piece on China's recent moves to prop up small coastal export businesses who are hurting with the slowdown in demand from the United States this holiday season:

Official statistics show that thousands of factories in Guangdong province have gone bankrupt this year. In the latest flare-up of unrest, laid off toy factory workers protested in Dongguan on Nov. 25, flipping police cars and smashing company offices.

This has Beijing worried. It has decided to protect exports by increasing export tax rebates and halting the three-year-long appreciation of China's currency against the dollar. And local governments in the delta have used billions of dollars to bail out small and medium enterprises.

China's top economic planner, National Development and Reform Commission Director Zhang Ping, defended the bailouts at a recent press conference.

"Helping these companies get through their current difficulties is entirely necessary and appropriate," Zhang said. "Otherwise, if too many factories go bankrupt, it will lead to many workers losing their jobs, and could increase social tensions and unrest."

On the other hand, Marketwatch reports that the country's growing golf sector was not so lucky:

Mission Hills, the self-proclaimed biggest golf club on Earth and recent host of the World Cup of Golf event, is sacking 2,000 employees, or 20% of its staff, according to a recent Bloomberg news report.

Yes, that's right. A golf course had 10,000 employees. At what point could a golf course be "too big to fail"?

(Hat tip: China Digital Times)

A brilliant innovation or a sad day for journalism? On Deadline reports, you decide:

Germany's Bild newspaper plans to partner with a supermarket chain to distribute $89 cameras that readers can use to take pictures and shoot videos for use in the publication's print and web editions.

"We can't cover everything," Michael Paustian, an editor at the paper, tells AP. "We think it is an advance for journalism."

Are you a member of the global elite? Do you enjoy shooting things? Have we got the product for you.

Colombian tailor Miguel Caballero, who for years has provided Colombia's political and business elite with safe but fashionable bulletproof garments, has seen his international business boom since since U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney accidently "peppered" his friend in the face with a shotgun while hunting quail in 2006. Buckingham Palace just ordered 52 jackets.

The Guardian reports:

[Caballero] has opened a branch in Mexico, which is convulsed by drug-related violence, and will soon open another in Guatemala. High-profile clients include Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, Spain's Prince Felipe and the Hollywood action star Steven Seagal, who requested a bullet-proof kimono.

In July, Caballero opened a branch in Harrods, London's flagship store, to cater largely to security-conscious Russian and Arab plutocrats. "We're just starting there and it's going well," he said this week, just back from a visit to London.

The protective jackets, blazers and raincoats rely not on Kevlar but overlaps of special synthetic material. The "classic" model weighs 1.5kg and can stop a round from .38 revolver and 9mm pistol. The "platinum" model weighs 2kg and can stop a mini-Uzi and MP5 assault rifle.

Caballero enjoys testing out new garments by shooting his employees, particularly his lawyer. If watching journalists get shot is more your speed, you can watch the Guardian's Rory Carroll take one at close range here.

Justin Fox explains why Detroit's Big Three get no love:

Most Americans simply no longer identify with the domestic auto industry (or with the states of Michigan and Ohio). To the Southerners who now make up the core constituency of the Republican Party, it's a bunch of coddled, unionized workers trying to get handouts that the South's auto industry (Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW ...) doesn't need. To the coastal urbanites and suburbanites who now make up the core constituency of the Democratic Party, it's an industry that makes crappy big cars and fights against higher fuel efficiency standards. And to the business press it's the worst thing of all: a trio of companies that are neither exciting nor financially successful.

Are those good reasons to deny Detroit aid? No, probably not. But they do explain why Detroit needs to come up with better reasoning of its own if it hopes to get any help from Washington.

Who would dare challenge Google, the superman of the Internet age?

India, that's who.

Fresh off the high of its recent lunar achievements, India is taking on the powerful Internet search company on a playing field a little closer to home: Google Earth. 

The Indian Based Research Organization (ISRO) plans to launch its Web-based mapping system, Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), by spring. The data comes from India's network of 50 satellites.

So, why does India think its program can compete? For starters, Bhuvan users will be able to zoom in on areas as small as 10 meters wide (Google's zoom limit is 200 meters). ISRO will replenish its high-resolution images each year, unlike Google, and its additional GPS component could lead to partnerships on navigation devices for cars.

While initially the program only covers India, if successful, Bhuvan will extend across the globe. ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair also hopes that the online software will lead to improvement India's notoriously bad offline hardware -- potholed road, clogged cities, and degraded environment. "This will not be a mere browser," he says. "but the mechanism for providing satellite images and thematic maps for developmental planning."

There's a lot of talk, in Thomas Freidman's columns and elsewhere, about how the U.S. auto industry deserves its current plight. I have some sympathy for this view, since I do believe GM and Ford have largely failed to innovate, fought hard against gas taxes or mileage standards, and generally managed their brands into the ground.

However, a couple points to consider:

• The industry was in trouble before, but it's the drying up of consumer demand due to the financial crisis that is threatening to destroy it at present. Even the innovative Toyota is feeling the pain right now.
• Who bought all those "gas-guzzling S.U.V.s and trucks" Friedman is ranting about? Martians?
• I must have missed the groundswell of grassroots activism in favor of the higher taxes that would have put a floor under the price of gasoline and made for a stable environment that could make technologies like plug-in hybrids viable even when market prices for crude oil collapse.

As oilman T. Boone Pickens put it this morning on Meet the Press, "If you want to blame somebody for it... all of us in America used the oil. The reason we did? The gasoline was cheap." Watch him here:

... in Europe?

Motor-industry executives say it is difficult to predict what might happen in the event of Ford or GM collapsing.

“It would be an enormous blow across the entire European industry,” said Professor Peter Cooke, a car-industry expert at the University of Buckingham Business School. “And, of course, it extends well beyond their direct operations to thousands of suppliers that make components and provide services.” [...]

Motor-industry leaders are stepping up their lobbying of European politicians in a search for financial aid similar to that being discussed in Washington.

European finance ministers will discuss the details of a €40 billion loan package at a meeting on December 2.

Tequila doesn't just produce hangovers any more. Under the right conditions, the alcohol can be turned into diamonds.

Researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, experimenting with making thin films of diamond from organic solutions, decided to conduct their tests using a "pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila." They heated the tequila to 1,470ºF, breaking down its molecular structure. The resulting carbon film, upon close examination, had formed into an almost perfect diamond structure. Tequila's mix of 40 percent ethanol and 60 percent water is the reason it serves as the perfect compound for creating synthetic diamonds.

The diamond film, while not useful in jewelry, could be used to coat cutting tools and perhaps most profitably as a substitute for silicon in computer chips. The researchers hope to begin mass-producing the synthetic diamond film by 2011. The advance could be a boon to both tequila manufacturers and Mexico's agave farmers, who would benefit from the increased demand for tequila. Watch out, Botswana!

Chris Hondros/Newsmakers

Great quote from European Commission agriculture spokesman Michael Mann:

"Next Wednesday is a new dawn for the bendy cucumber and the amusingly shaped carrot."

The news is that the commission is voting tomorrow on whether to ditch its infamous "marketing standards" for produce, a favorite target of ridicule for euroskeptics. Among other rules, the standards specified that cucumbers sold within Europe had to be "practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber)."

Eliminating the draconian standards is the right thing to do in a time of high global food prices and a smart move for the EU's image. Bring on the amusing carrots!

Despite the greater-than-expected losses reported by Ford and GM today, such abysmal results fail to surprise anyone these days. The U.S. car industry's "Big Three" have lumbered on with bloated bureaucracies and product lines for many years now. But what the financial crisis has done is bring into sharp relief which carmakers are poised for survival and which are destined for the scrap heap.

Carmakers the world over have been hurting. Sales at BMW fell 8.3 percent in October, while Toyota recently cut its year-end profit forecast by 63 percent. The outlook is particularly bad for Europe, since 60-80 percent of car purchases there use credit-financing, the availability of which continues to shrink, while only 30 percent of car purchases in Japan are credit-financed. Meanwhile, slower automobile production in Europe is also taking a major toll on U.S. parts suppliers, adding insult to injury as the suppliers' prospects have already tanked with the car industry at home.

But even if carmakers everywhere are suffering, what sets apart a company like Toyota, currently the world's largest car manufacturer, is cash. Toyota has $18.5 billion in cash and a steady hand on those reserves. As for General Motors, flagging sales have caused the company to burn through $6.9 billion in cash in the last quarter alone. Fewer people are buying cars, but GM still has to pay its bills -- employee's wages, the costs of running factories, etc. Now, GM admits it may drop below $11 billion in cash reserves, the minimum it needs to pay those bills, before the year is out. That means bankruptcy. Ford is slightly doing better, but not by much.

So, can U.S. automakers still stage a comeback? They're already behind on fuel economy and alternative energy. GM has some big projects in the works, but it might not survive long enough to see them through. Millions of jobs are at stake, and President-elect Barack Obama seems to favor providing some aid to automakers. But we'll have to see if taxpayers want to get involved. They're probably still reeling from buyer's remorse after scooping up Fannie Mae and AIG.

It makes sense that the British government would want to smooth over relations with Russia by sending a cabinet minister to visit Moscow, the first such visit in over a year. But couldn't the Brits have sent someone -- anyone -- other than Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who is currently at the center of a scandal over his relationship with a Russian oligarch?

Mandelson's friendly overtures to the Kremlin have been entirely overshadowed by questions from the British press. At issue is whether favors from metals magnate Oleg Deripaska played a role in Mandelson's decision to reduce aluminum tariffs while he was EU trade commissioner, a decision that greatly benefited Russia's richest man. Months after the change, Deripaska entertained Mandelson and other VIPs on his yacht in the Mediterranean.

Mandelson angrily brushed aside a question about the scandal during a press conference Wednesday, telling the reporter, "You have wasted your question." Mandelson has been cleared by the British government of any wrongdoing, but during a BBC interview, also yesterday, he noticeably failed to deny that he and Deripaska had discussed lowering the tariffs prior to the decision being made.

The tabloids have been having a field day with the $9,000-a-night hotel suite where Lord Mandelson is staying during his Moscow visit, a questionable PR move during an economic crisis. The Daily Mail proclaimed the room, "Fit for an Oligarch." It also can't help Mandelson that Deripaska is back in the headlines for the $4.5 billion bailout he received from the Russian government this week.

The Brits might want a do-over on this one.

Photo: Alexey SAZONOV/AFP/Getty Images

Remember when it was cool to drink Fiji water or down a nice, cold bottle of Evian? Those days are over:

The world's top sellers of bottled water are trying to stop western consumers turning back to the tap by addressing environmental issues and trumpeting health benefits, while expanding aggressively in emerging markets.

Nestle, the world's biggest bottler of water with brands like Perrier and Poland Spring, said last week the economic slowdown and environmental concerns were hurting sales in western Europe and North America.

PepsiCo saw double-digit declines in the third quarter in its water brands, which include Propel and Aquafina, while Danone, with brands like Evian and Volvic, said demand had contracted in France, Spain and Britain.

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Former British Telecom employee John Tasker stands in an old canteen in a secret air raid tunnel on Oct. 17, 2008 in London. The once-secret tunnels were built 100 feet under central London in 1940 as fully equipped air raid shelters and could accommodate 8,000 people. They have since been used by MI6 and the Public Records Office to hold 400 tons of secret documents. Current owner British Telecom (BT) once housed the London trunk exchange of the secure trans-Atlantic hotline between the presidents of the United States and the Soviet Union. BT is now seeking a buyer for the tunnels.

Read more about the tunnels here.

Economic prophet-of-doom Nouriel Roubini seems to be feeling pretty smug these days, and who can blame him. Here's part of an e-mail he sent in response to a question from Portfolio's Felix Salmon:

Read my February 12 steps to a financial disaster paper. We are now as I predicted at step 12
Sorry if I now say I told you so...
Feeling a little chastised for giving me so much s--t on your blog for the last year and siding persistently with those who missed the boat and said all wil be fine? Should I expect a public mea culpa?
It would be useful if you would publicly admit you got it totally wrong for the last year.

Salmon obliges.

For the record, no one can accuse FP of blowing off Roubini. The RGE Monitor chairman wrote a cover story on "The Coming Financial Pandemic" for our March/April issue and a Web exclusive on why "a financial meltdown is more likely than ever" exactly a year ago.

KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images

Think Richard Fuld didn't humiliate himself enough yesterday?

Appearing before Rep. Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Monday, the Lehman Brothers CEO said he felt "horrible" about his company's collapse, adding, "I wake up every single night wondering what I could have done differently."

"Your company is now bankrupt and our country is in a state of crisis," Waxman asked. "You get to keep $480 million. I have a very basic question: Is that fair?"

Ouch. Pretty embarrassing, right?

Well, this is how they do corporate apologies in Japan:

That's via James at Japan Probe, who explains that the man in the video is president of a study abroad company that went bankrupt.

UPDATE: I'm not sure if this kind of stuff happens in Japan, however.