A South Korean court has sent another of the country's most powerful bosses to jail.

Shin Dong-bin, the billionaire chairman of conglomerate Lotte Group, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after he was found guilty of bribery Tuesday.

The trial of Shin, 62, followed a huge influence-peddling scandal that gripped the country and brought down the government of former President Park Geun-hye.

The organised labour said it has submitted a fresh demand for a minimum wage above N56,000 to the tripartite committee on minimum wage.

It also assured that talks on the workers’ salaries review would be concluded between June and July this year.

The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, said the new demand was to reflect inflation and other economic realities in the country.

The Enugu State House of Assembly, Tuesday, passed the State’s 2018 appropriation bill, totally N103, 563, 500, 000 (one hundred and three billion, five-hundred and sixty-three million, five hundred thousand naira) into law.

The figure represents an increase of N5b to the ninety eight billion naira earlier proposed by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi.

The House said the increment, which is for capital expenditure, was to boost the State Government’s infrastructure development drive in the State.

The internet users increased marginally to 98.3million in December 2017, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has said. The NCC made this disclosure in its Monthly Internet Subscribers Data for December 2017 on its website on Thursday in Abuja. According to the data, Airtel, MTN and Glo gained more internet subscribers during the month in review while 9mobile was the big loser.

President Donald Trump has unveiled a $4.4 trillion budget for next year that heralds an era of $1 trillion-plus federal deficits.

The growing deficits reflect, in part, the impact of last year's tax overhaul, which is projected to cause federal tax revenue to plummet. And Monday's budget submission does not yet reflect last week's two-year bipartisan $300 billion pact that wholly rejects Trump's plans to slash domestic agencies.

The spending spree, along with last year's tax cuts, has the deficit moving sharply higher with Republicans in control of Washington. Trump's plan sees a 2019 deficit of $984 billion, though $1.2 trillion is more plausible after last week's budget pact and $90 billion worth of disaster aid is tacked on. That's more than double the 2019 deficit the administration promised last year.

Oil prices lifted by a report that U. S. crude inventories fell last week. The Brent crude futures were at $67.84 per barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at 63.85 dollars a barrel. That was up 46 cents, or 0.7 per cent from their last settlement. The market was supported by a report by the American Petroleum Institute (API) on Tuesday saying that U.S. crude inventories fell by 1.1 million barrels in the week to Feb. 2 to 418.4 million barrels, traders said.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has charged Barclays Bank PLC with "unlawful financial assistance" related to billions of pounds raised from Qatar in 2008.

The same charges were bought against Barclays PLC in June last year.

The move to charge Barclays Bank as well is significant because it holds the banking licence that allows it to operate in different countries.

So, if Barclays was found guilty, it could lose that crucial licence.

OLX has confirmed its exit from the Nigerian market after Business Insider Sub Saharan Africa broke news of the decision. According to Sjoerd Nikkelen, CEO of OLX AMEA, the decision was a difficult but necessary one. "We made a difficult but important decision in Nigeria to consolidate our operations between some of our offices internationally."

The Chairman Senate Ad hoc Committee on Local Content, Mr Solomon Adeola, has commended the management of Total Upstream Nigeria Limited on its $16bn (N5.76tn) Egina project in Nigeria. Adeola, who gave the commendation during the committee’s oversight function in Lagos on Friday, promised total support for the local content development initiative. The committee inspected the $3.3bn Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) vessel.

The Central Bank of Nigeria also announced that the country’s foreign exchange reserves had hit $42bn as of February 6, 2018.

The Director, Banking Supervision Department, CBN, Ahmad Abudullahi, disclosed that the external reserves had hit $42bn, adding $2bn since the beginning of the year.