China has revealed that senior Communist Party official Bo Xilai has been suspended from key positions, with his wife named as a suspect in the murder of a British businessman.

State television said Mr Bo has been suspended from the party’s 25-member Politburo on suspicion of involvement in “serious discipline violations”.

CCTV said Mr Bo’s wife Gu Kailai is being investigated for intentional homicide of a British citizen, Neil Heywood, who died in November in Chongqing a major city in Southwest China.

Iran halts oil exports to Spain

Iran has reportedly stopped oil exports to Spain.

The report from the semi-official Mehr news agency quotes unnamed sources as saying the country has stopped the sale of crude to Spain as part of Teheran’s pre-emptive retaliation over an EU embargo that is to go into effect in July.

The embargo was imposed over Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.

Mehr news reportedthat Iran may also cut its oil exports to Italy, saying that Teheran has contacted Italian refineries, demanding they agree to long term contracts to buy oil from Iran.

Apple hits €458 billion mark

Apple, already the world’s most valuable company, has reached the $600 billion (€458 billion) level for the first time yesterday.

Only one other company has been worth that much – Apple’s old sparring partner Microsoft Corporation.

The electronics giant reached that valuation for 13 trading days around the turn of the millennium, at the peak of the technology stock mania.

At its highest level, on December 30, 1999, Microsoft’s valuation was €473 billion. It is now worth €198 billion.

Day care operator, parents shot

A day care operator and her parents were killed in a shooting incident at her home in Minnesota, relatives have said.

James Bolden told reporters that police told him his sister, DeLois Brown, and his parents James and Clover Bolden, were killed in the attack in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of the city of Minneapolis.

No arrests have been made. Police say the bodies were discovered by a mother who had just dropped off her toddler and then returned to the centre after seeing a suspicious person nearby. Her child was nharmed, and no one else was hurt in the attack.

Ron Brown, DeLois Brown’s brother-in-law, says DeLois had just moved her parents to Minnesota from the St Louis area so she could take care of them.

Spanish royal shoots self in foot

The king of Spain’s 13-year-old grandson has accidentally shot himself in the foot with a shotgun, palace officials said.

A spokesperson said the boy, Felipe Juan Froilan, was handling a small-calibre weapon at a country estate owned by his father when the gun went off, injuring his right foot. Widely known in media as Froilan, the boy is the son of Princess Elena, the eldest of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia’s three children, and an aristocrat and banker named Jaime de Marichalar. The couple were divorced in 2009.