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Standard Chartered expects to pay $330 million to settle a case with U.S. regulators who accused the Asia-focused bank of failing to comply with sanctions against Iran,further denting profit growth this year.

The Senate on Friday resoundingly approved new sanctions on trade with Iran's energy, port, shipping and ship-building sectors, its latest effort to ratchet up economic pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.

Over the last six months, Iran has evaded U.S. sanctions by importing Turkish gold to pay for billions of dollars worth of energy sales to Turkey.

The United States set a March deadline on Thursday for Iran to start cooperating in substance with a U.N. nuclear agency investigation, saying it would otherwise urge reporting the issue to the U.N. Security Council.

Iran will go on refining uranium "with intensity" and the number of enrichment centrifuges it has operating will rise substantially in the current year, the country's nuclear energy chief was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

A diagram obtained by The Associated Press shows that Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

The courtship of Hamas between rivals Iran and Qatar has been one of the Middle East's intriguing subplots of the Arab Spring.

Six world powers are committed to holding a new round of nuclear negotiations with Iran as soon as possible, said a spokesman for the European Union's foreign policy chief, who represents the six in talks with Iran.

Iran is ready to double the output at its underground uranium enrichment facility, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency says.

Iran is believed to have increased the number of centrifuges in an underground nuclear plant by nearly a third in three months, diplomats say, underlining the tough task facing major powers pressing Tehran to curb its atomic activity.