A giant white kangaroo bounced into the science books on Tuesday as part of a global experiment to measure the amount of light the Earth reflects back to the sun.

The cardboard cut-out marsupial, which measures 32 metres (105 feet) by 18 metres, was laid out in a paddock on the grounds of Monash University in the southern city of Melbourne.

"We call it our kangaroo from space because two satellites flew over (and) what they were doing was measuring the amount of light reflected from our kangaroo," Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich told AFP.

"And the point of that was to make people aware that reflected light, or lack of reflected light, has a very big effect on climate."

Japan's newly privatised postal bank plans to raise its investment overseas to almost 10 billion dollars this year, aiming to boost earnings ahead of an initial public offering, a report said Tuesday.

Japan Post Bank, created by the break-up of the mail operator last year, plans to ask foreign companies to manage some of the roughly 180 trillion yen (1.7 trillion dollars) in assets it oversees, the Nikkei business newspaper reported.

US asset management firm BlackRock Inc. is believed to be among the candidates, it reported, without saying where it got the information.

Japan Post Bank is expected to invest at least 1.0 trillion yen (9.6 billion dollars) in the current fiscal year to March, the daily reported.

The bank is expected to invest in US and European corporate bonds, it said.

Until now the post office's assets have been largely invested in government bonds, helping to finance popular but often wasteful public works projects.

The commercial bank, which has the world's largest savings, was created in October as the government broke up Japan Post at the start of a privatisation process set to reshape the country's finance industry.

British clothes to food retailer Marks and Spencer posted annual profits of more than one billion pounds (1.2 billion euros, 1.9 billion dollars) Tuesday, the company said.

Pre-tax profits of 1.1 billion pounds for the financial year to March 29 were 4.3 percent ahead of the previous 12-month period and exceeded market expectations.

It is the first time it had breached the one-billion-pound mark since 1997-98.

But the results coincided with a 1.7 percent fall in like-for-like sales during the final three months of the year -- the second successive quarter of sales declines after a disappointing period over Christmas last December.

Barclays (BARC.L) is considering a takeover bid for a rival and could try to buy an investment bank, the Telegraph reported on Tuesday citing sources.

Bob Diamond, the head of Barclays' investment bank unit, is thought to have looked at both Lehman Brothers (LEH.N) and UBS (UBSN.VX) in the past few weeks, the newspaper said.

Barclays was not immediately available to comment.

(Reporting by Erica Billingham; Editing by Richard Hubbard)

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) has proposed to buy Yahoo Inc's (YHOO.O) search business and take a minority stake in the Web pioneer, stopping short of a full-out merger, a person familiar with the discussions said on Monday.

As part of the deal Yahoo would put its Asian assets, including significant minority stakes in Yahoo Japan (4689.T) and China's Alibaba Group, up for sale, while Microsoft would buy a chunk of what remains of the company, the source said.

The talks were revealed by the two companies on Sunday, but they declined to reveal the terms of the discussions. Earlier this month, Microsoft walked away from a proposal to acquire Yahoo for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, after Yahoo rebuffed the offer, saying it would only settle for $37 a share.

The new deal, if completed, would forge an alliance between the two companies that would represent an alternative means of competing with rival Google Inc (GOOG.O), whose ubiquitous search engine has made it an online advertising powerhouse.

Microsoft Corp. withdrew its $42.3 billion bid to buy Yahoo Inc. on Saturday, scrapping an attempt to snap up the tarnished Internet icon in hopes of toppling online search and advertising leader Google Inc.

The decision to walk away from the deal came after last-ditch efforts to negotiate a mutually acceptable sale price proved unsuccessful.

The talks reached a breaking point after Jerry Yang and David Filo, the co-founders of Sunnyvale-based Yahoo, flew to Seattle in the morning to meet personally with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Kevin Johnson, who runs the software maker's unprofitable online services division, according to someone familiar with the talks. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified.

"Clearly a deal is not to be," Ballmer wrote to Yang in a letter sent late Saturday.

Microsoft was willing to pay $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, up from the bid's current value of $29.40 per share, according to Ballmer's letter.

But Yahoo's board demanded at least $53 billion, or $37 per share, according to Ballmer. That would have been nearly double Yahoo's stock price of $19.18 at the time Microsoft first made its bid a little over three months ago.

Oil prices rose Monday after global financial leaders expressed concerns about volatility in major currencies and the dollar slipped against the euro.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose $1.09 to $111.23 a barrel in electronic trading by midday in Europe. The contract rose 3 cents to settle at $110.14 a barrel Friday.

Crude oil's recent run above $100 a barrel has been largely attributed to a steadily depreciating U.S. currency, because a weakening dollar attracts investors to commodities as a hedge against inflation.

The Group of Seven industrialized nations said in a statement Friday that "there have been at times sharp fluctuations in major currencies, and we are concerned about their possible implications for economic and financial stability."

Computer maker Dell Inc. will keep getting more than $300 million in state and local grants and tax breaks in North Carolina after the state's Supreme Court declined Friday to hear a lawsuit challenging the incentives.

The North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law, a taxpayer advocacy group, sued the company and state and local governments in 2005, saying the subsidies violated the U.S. and North Carolina constitutions because they primarily benefit Dell, rather than a general public purpose.

In exchange for the payments and tax breaks, which are spread over many years, Dell promised in 2004 to create at least 1,500 jobs at its plant near Winston-Salem and to invest at least $100 million in the area over the following 15 years.

The agreement could result in Dell not paying any state corporate income tax for more than 30 more years.