Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos plans to dive 14,000 feet below the surface and raise the F-1 engines that fired Neil Armstrong to the moon in July 1969.

Just days earlier, producer and director James Cameron lived out his own real-life adventure, plunging solo to the deepest point known in the world’s ocean – 35,800 feet under the surface.

Not to be outdone, British businessman Richard Branson has announced plans for his own deep dive. “The Puerto Rico Trench is the deepest place in the Atlantic and is deeper than Mount Everest is high,” Branson says on the website.

“It should prove to be quite an adventure.”

A bevy of wealthy entrepreneurs are setting off for extremes, be it the depth of the ocean or the widths of space.

“The basics of human survival are shelter and security,” James Carter, CEO of Be Legendary, a company offering surviving retreats, told CNN. “Executives, if they’ve ever lived in that world, have completely forgotten what it’s like.”

 Route to the Top: Extreme Retreats

Bezos says it is his passion for science that made him want to recover the five F-1 engines powering the Saturn V rocket. “I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration,” Bezos writes on his blog.

Oscar-winning director and filmmaker Cameron tweeted on Monday “Just arrived at the ocean’s deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good.”

Wealthy adventurers also head to the other direction. Charles Simonyi, chairman, CTO and founder of Intentional Software Corporation conducted his second trip to the International Space Station ISS in 2009.

He joins Internet entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, businessman Dennis Tito and video game programmer Richard Garriott, just to name a few. The world’s premier space exploration company, Space Adventures, started space trips to the ISS in 1998.

Yanik Silver, a serial Internet entrepreneur and self-made millionaire founded Maverick Business Adventure. The exclusive club for wealthy entrepreneurs offers adventures such as high speed evasive driving, combat pistol shooting, parabolic flights to experience zero gravity, ice climbing on a glacier, wildlife safaris and extreme scuba diving.

He says the extreme adventures not only brought a sense of accomplishment but also serve as a source for ideas and business strategy.

Thrill-seeking executives risk dangers, but adventurer and businessman Steve Fossett met his demise died on a recreational flight. The 63-year-old millionaire’s single-engine plane disappeared in September 2007 in the east-central mountains of California and was discovered a year later. Fossett was the first person who flew uninterrupted around the world in a hot air balloon. With 76 hours in a lightweight plane, he completed the longest non-stop flight in aviation history, the New York Times reported.

After all, businessman or not, extreme adventures can be tough, as James Cameron tweeted after resurfacing last Monday. “Back from trip to deepest pl on Earth -#oceans hadal zone. Puts a new spin on “to hell and back”. Good to see the sunshine.”

The leaders of five of the world’s top emerging economies moved closer Thursday toward establishing a development bank that could one day serve as an alternative to the World Bank.

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — collectively known as the BRICS — “agreed to examine in greater detail a proposal to set up a BRICS-led South-South Development Bank, funded and managed by the BRICS and other developing countries,” said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India.

The leaders were meeting in New Delhi on Thursday for their fourth annual summit. Finance ministers from the five countries have been directed to look into the idea of the development bank and report back at the next summit, Singh said.

The leaders also asked the International Monetary Fund to speed up changes in its governance to better represent the developing world as a voting bloc.

“The rapid recovery of the BRICS economies from the financial crisis highlighted their role as growth drivers of the global economy,” Singh said.

Together, the BRICS nations make up more than 40% of the world population and one-fifth of the global economy.

The group called for peaceful resolutions of the Syria and Iranian crises.

“We agreed that a lasting solution to the problems in Syria and Iran can only be found through dialogue,” Singh said.

Besides the IMF, the leaders also urged reforms of the United Nations and other international bodies for a larger voice for the developing world.

“Institutions of global political and economic governance created more than six decades ago have not kept pace with the changing world. While some progress has been made in international financial institutions, there is lack of movement on the political side,” Singh said. “BRICS should speak with one voice on important issues such as the reform of the UN Security Council.”

Facebook will permanently halt trades of its stock on private secondary markets at the end of this week. The move is to allow the social network to finalise its shareholder list and tighten information pathways leading up to its initial public offering, expected in May.

SharesPost, which facilitates the private sale of Facebook shares, told investors the company had requested a stop to trading on Friday “to help ensure [its] orderly transition into the public markets”. Two people familiar with the situation confirmed the move.

Facebook’s IPO is expected to be one of the largest ever, with some estimates putting a $100bn valuation on the company at the time of the public offering.

The length of the stop on trading is unusual. Other internet companies, including Groupon and Zynga, continued trading on the private markets right up to their IPOs, while LinkedIn ceased trading a week before its offering. Most companies take a few days, said Sam Hamadeh, chief executive of PrivCo, which researches private companies. Facebook will be the first to take at least a month.

Mr Hamadeh said the company probably wanted to prevent any leak of sensitive information from a private transaction, thereby avoiding legal risks.

It may also want to calm the private market before its IPO is priced. Facebook shares last traded at $43.50 on SharesPost, down from a February high of $46.

Facebook is aiming to go public in May, according to a person briefed on the deal, though the Securities and Exchange Commission will have a say on the timing.

The company has so far been meticulous in its preparations and dealings with regulators. The SEC has posed minimal questions to Facebook, requiring minor revisions to the company’s original IPO registration forms which were filed in February.

Facebook since filed two amendments, the last one on Tuesday, which included updated warnings about a patent lawsuit Yahoo filed against Facebook earlier this month and some updated metrics about its users and engagement. The first amendment revealed that the company had established a new line of credit worth $5bn and secured a $3bn bridge loan to cover the costs of its employees selling company shares.

Facebook’s exit from the secondary market is expected to have a big impact on companies like SharesPost and SecondMarket, a New York-based company that facilitates trades in private stock. Both companies were essentially built around the desire of former Facebook employees to liquidate their stock and the majority of trades they enable are for Facebook stock.

Nyppex, an illiquid securities trading consultancy, estimates its volumes will slow in 2012 to $7.1bn from $9.3bn last year, as companies like Facebook, and possibly Twitter, go public.

Facebook, SharesPost and SecondMarket declined to comment.

Energy giant Total has found the source of a gas leak on an offshore oil platform in the North Sea, the company told CNN on Thursday. The leak is on the deck level of the well head platform, Total said.

The Elgin platform sprang a leak Sunday, forcing the evacuation of the rig.

Experts are working to decide whether they can wait for the gas to stop leaking on its own, or whether the company must drill a relief well or fill it with mud in a “kill operation,” Total said.

Nearly 240 workers were taken off the rig as the problem developed Sunday, Total has said.

The leak seems to have started as workers were sealing the well in the North Sea, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) east of the Scottish city of Aberdeen.

“Ironically, it sounds as if, just like with the Deepwater Horizon, they were closing off a well and somewhere along the line something went wrong,” oceanographer Simon Boxall said, referring to the major BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

The Elgin leak has echoes of the BP spill, but there are differences. The Elgin is in shallower water, which could make problems easier to fix, but it is leaking gas, rather than oil. Gas ignites more easily.

“This is nothing on the scale of the Gulf spill two years ago,” Boxall said. “This is a relatively light spill. The gas itself is dispersing quite rapidly.”

“The hope is that there is so little gas pressure in there that it will just blow itself out,” he said of the Elgin spill.

Total’s share price was down about 2% in trading in France on Thursday afternoon.

The French company’s share price fell 7% Tuesday on news of the leak, but market analyst firm Jeffries International said Wednesday that it thought the market had overreacted.

A union representing workers on the rig warned Wednesday that there was an “urgent need” to stop the leak.

“If the gas cloud somehow finds an ignition source, we could be looking at complete destruction,” said Jake Molloy, an official with the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.

“This is an unprecedented situation, and we really are in the realms of the unknown,” he said.

But oceanographer Boxall said the risk of explosion may not be as high as initially feared.

“Initially, the risk of explosion was seen as being very high. There were reports coming through of a large gas cloud enveloping the whole rig,” he told CNN.

But the fact that there has been no blast when the flare on the gas rig is still burning “obviously contradicts the idea that there was a very high risk of explosion,” he said.

“Perhaps the quantity of gas is not that great as first thought,” he said.

For the moment, the wind seems to be blowing the gas cloud away from the flare on the Elgin rig.

The winds over the North Sea around the Eglin platform are predicted to remain strong (40-50 kph, with gusts over 60 kph) and out of the northwest through Friday. On Saturday, the winds are expected to shift slightly out of the north, as an area of high pressure drifts eastward over the British Isles, and they should weaken Sunday. Scattered light showers are possible Friday and Saturday, but the area should stay mostly dry through the weekend.

Total said there was a “sheen on the water in the vicinity of the platform,” but said Tuesday there was no indication of environmental damage and there had been no injuries.

Shell partially evacuated two of its nearby platforms, Shearwater and Hans Deul, as a “purely precautionary” measure, it said Wednesday.

The North Sea was the scene of the world’s worst offshore rig disaster, the Piper Alpha explosion, which killed 167 people in 1988.

Huge traffic jams snarled central Madrid Thursday, as Spain’s first general strike in more than a year kicked off with nine people slightly injured in demonstrations, including police officers, the Interior Ministry said.

Interior Ministry official Cristina Diaz said 58 people had been detained. The cause was not immediately clear.

Dozens of union members picketed outside the Agriculture Ministry before dawn, with dozens of riot police on hand. Picketers heckled and momentarily blocked a car trying to get into the ministry.

Spanish unions are protesting the new conservative government’s labor reforms and austerity cuts.

The general strike is the first one against the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, which was elected in November and took office in December, in the midst of Spain’s deep economic crisis.

Spain’s jobless rate is nearly 23% overall, and nearly 50% for youth. Nearly 5.3 million Spaniards are out of work.

The Socialist-leaning General Workers Union (UGT) said there was a “massive following” of the strike nationwide, with auto factories, ports, post offices and garbage collection all stopped by the industrial action.

The union also said wholesale food markets and large distribution centers for the big supermarket chains were disrupted.

The Interior Ministry said public transport was operating almost normally in Madrid and Barcelona, but in Madrid’s Plaza Castilla, commuters said they waited up to two hours for public transport.

Some bus services which normally run every five minutes had service only every 30 minutes, according to a municipal bus employee who declined to give his name.

Madrid’s traffic jams lasted beyond the normal rush hour, an indication that commuters who could not get public transport decided to drive in.

The last general strike, in September 2010, was against the then-Socialist government, which also had initiated austerity measures. That strike slowed industry and transport, but much of the country went to work and many analysts saw it as a kind of a draw between the government and unions.

Since then, the economic crisis has deepened.

Union protests across the nation this month and last drew large crowds, which analysts say emboldened the unions to move ahead with a general strike.

The government says the latest labor reforms are needed to bring flexibility to the workplace and to simplify the rules for employers. But unions say the effect will be to make it easier and cheaper to fire workers.

The unions’ strike theme is: “They want to end labor and social rights and finish off everything.”

At the MercaMadrid wholesale fish market, one of the largest in Europe, seafood wholesaler Alfonso Mozos, who employs 120 people, said before the union action that he doesn’t think striking is good.

“It would be better if unions, the government and employers would negotiate and find a solution,” he said.

Union picketers were expected at the entrance to the sprawling market on Madrid’s south side, but some employees said they planned to work despite the strike.

“If the boss buys fish and we need to come, we’ll come,” said Pedro Marin, a worker at the wholesale market. “But if the union pickets outside won’t let us in, we’ll just have to wait, or maybe go home.”

Many other Spaniards, who have already seen their salaries cut or frozen in the economic crisis, were debating whether to strike. If they walk out, they will lose a day’s wage, which for government workers could amount to several hundred dollars.

Ahead of the strike, unions and government officials in many, but not all, of Spain’s 17 regions agreed on minimum services, which generally call for about 30% of public transportation to run, while public hospitals and other essential services have reduced staff, similar to holiday levels.

The unions planned 80 demonstrations across the country Thursday, mostly in the late afternoon or early evening.

The strike comes one day before the government unveils its 2012 budget on Friday, with the aim of reducing Spain’s deficit to 5.3% of gross domestic product this year, and to 3% next year, to meet European Union requirements.

The government already approved a $20 billion (15 billion euro) package of austerity cuts and tax hikes to reduce the deficit, and on Friday it is expected to announce a second package of the same size or larger. Government critics say it will be the first time the government really shows its hand on where to make deep cuts in specific programs and agencies.

Rajoy, at a recent European Union summit, was reported by Spanish media to be overheard on an open microphone telling another EU leader that the labor reforms would cost him a general strike.

The reforms were approved first as a decree law, with immediate effect, and the unions called on the government to make amendments as the bill moved through parliament. But the conservatives have a commanding majority in parliament and later approved the reforms unchanged.

The government says the labor reforms make up only a portion of the elements needed to spur an economic recovery. It predicts a 1.7% decline in the economy this year.

The government also has demanded reforms in the banking sector, with the aim of getting credit flowing again and to clean up the books of lenders stuck with huge uncollectible debts left over from Spain’s real estate and construction boom that went bust, precipitating the economic crisis.

In the busy street markets of Kabul, stacks of cash sit in piles as moneychangers shout the day’s exchange rate to shoppers bustling by. Currency is bought and sold in the open air.

But all the money changing hands on the streets is barely a drop in the bucket compared to all the cash being siphoned out of the country in suitcases, and that is not a metaphor.

“It’s hard to estimate exactly how much is going out of Afghanistan, but I can tell you in 2011, 4.5 billion was (flown) out of Afghanistan,” said Khan Afzal Hadawal, deputy governor of the bank of Afghanistan.

That is just what is moving out of the Kabul airport. It is estimated $8 billion in cash was lugged out of the country last year by car, private jets and border crossings. That is almost double the entire country’s budget for 2011.

The government is trying to stop the outflow of money to other countries and encourage investment in Afghanistan. It has capped the amount of cash that can be taken out of the country at $20,000.

“We are very serious on this. It is not an easy job. Definitely there are challenges. People will try to use other channels but we will not let anybody take the physical cash out of Afghanistan,” Hadawal said.

Military: Bales left base twice during rampage

He and his family have made a huge investment in the capital, Kabul, constructing large self-contained communities complete with mosques, schools and hospitals. The idea is to make people feel safer by creating a tiny city within a city.

The price per apartment starts at $70,000.

“Kabul was mostly destroyed in wars. There is need for construction in Afghanistan and the amount of housing that is needed is not being fulfilled,” Caravan said.

The projects have created dozens of jobs for people like Abdul Wahab, who has 13 family members to provide for.

“It’s hard to find work and to find good work,” Wahab said after using all his body weight and strength to lean on a lever linked to a device that cuts rebar.

If it wasn’t for this job, he said, his family would suffer greatly.

Caravan said he wants others to help rebuild instead of storing their cash in already posh Dubai.

“We are Afghans and should build up our own country by any means. We should be proud of our country,” he said.

But he said he understands why people have moved out large sums of cash.

There is a looming fear that when NATO forces leave, so will any semblance of security, both physical and economic.

Three NATO soldiers killed

“We are worried about security, that it doesn’t get worse. We want a stable system here in Afghanistan after foreign troops’ withdrawal. We worry about this and nothing else,” Caravan said.

The 10-year war has brought heartache, but also more stability.

Foreign aid is propping up Afghanistan’s economy. The question on every potential investor’s mind is whether Afghanistan will be able to sustain itself when the war is finally over.

Ontario’s top court has legalized brothels, saying Canadian prostitution laws unfairly discriminate against prostitutes and their ability to work in safe environments.

A panel of five judges wrote that the law banning common bawdy houses “is grossly disproportionate” if all it aims to do is keep public order in a neighborhood and maintain public health standards.

“The record is clear that the safest way to sell sex is for a prostitute to work indoors, in a location under her control,” the judges wrote in a much anticipated ruling.

“The impact on those put at risk by the legislation is extreme,” the judges added.

However, the court stopped short of allowing prostitutes to openly solicit customers on the streets. The court ruled that prohibiting solicitation remains a “a reasonable limit on the right to freedom of expression.”

“It is so nice to see that we are now brought out into society. I feel a debutante at a ball. We’re almost full citizens, so this is wonderful,” said Valerie Scott, a former prostitute.

Supporters of the ruling said the laws governing prostitution in Canada would now have to change.

“Any form of criminalization pushes the industry underground and gives opportunities to predators. You can see it through the world,” said Nikki Thomas, executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada.

The judicial panel ruled that the changes should not take affect for at least one year, allowing the government to amend its criminal code. Any of those changes would apply to the entire country, not just the province of Ontario.

But the Canadian government released a statement saying it was now weighing its legal options.

“As the Prime Minister (Stephen Harper) has said, prostitution is bad for society and harmful to communities, women and vulnerable persons,” Rob Nicholson, Canada’s justice minister, said in a statement released by his office.

The government indicated it would review the decision, but an appeal to Canada’s Supreme Court is also a possibility.

A report suggesting India’s government lost $210bn in revenue by underpricing coal assets also reveals a catalogue of wider delays and mismanagement, deepening pressure on the nation’s embattled coalition government.

The draft document from India’s comptroller and auditor-general, which provoked a furore when leaked last week, suggests that the provision of coal to businesses without competitive auctions resulted in significant production shortfalls.

The report, a copy of which has been seen by the Financial Times, shows that 60 of 86 allocated coal concessions had failed to begin production as planned by March 2011, resulting in coal output falling more than 50 per cent below target.

“This would imply that either some of the allocattees [sic] were non-serious about production and/or the set of incentives which was required to help expedite commencement of production was not available”, the report says.

Many of the remaining projects were also mired in a mixture of land disputes, environmental clearances and delays in the allocation of mining licences, which the report says can take up to eight years to grant.

India is the world’s third largest coal producer, but inefficiency and slow decision-making in the state-dominated coal sector has increasingly forced many private sector energy groups to import supplies from countries such as Indonesia and Australia.

The report says attempts to improve domestic production through the introduction of a market-based system as far back as 2004 were effectively rejected by the coal ministry, which continued to allocate licences at below market rates despite advice confirming the legality of a competitive alternative.

The office of Manmohan Singh, prime minister, has conducted a damage-limitation operation in the aftermath of the leaking of the report to rebut accusations that its policy provided windfall gains to power and steel companies.

The head of India’s audit body also publicly recanted on the draft analysis at the end of last week, saying the findings were preliminary and therefore “exceedingly misleading”.

Nonetheless, the government is understood to be considering a new system that allocates mining rights through competitive bidding, one of the report’s main recommendations, with guidance on licences said to be released before the summer.

Analysts say introducing such a system, while beneficial in the long run, could prove politically problematic in a country where fuel shortages dog the power sector and consumers rely on heavily subsidised energy.

Arvind Mahajan, head of natural resources and infrastructure at KPMG India, said: “Auctions are transparent and they maximise revenues, but introducing them means users will have to pay much more for coal, in turn meaning that the cost of power would go up.”

“The more important issue is when will the government look at more competition in the coal sector in general to allow coal companies to sell in the open market, which isn’t allowed at the moment.”

Germany is poised to bow to international pressure and allow a temporary increase in the eurozone’s financial “firewall” this week, to prevent the crisis in the region’s periphery spreading to other member states.

Officials in Berlin signalled on Sunday that the government would allow funds to be boosted as a way of calming financial market pressures.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, had resisted any increase, despite pressure from most of her eurozone partners and the US administration, because she risks a political backlash from sceptical allies in her ruling coalition if it means any increase in Germany’s overall financial guarantees for its partners. But the thinking in Berlin is that she cannot resist the international pressure indefinitely.

Olli Rehn, EU commissioner for monetary affairs, expected eurozone finance ministers to reach a decision at a meeting in Copenhagen this Friday.

“The key thing now is to conclude the comprehensive crisis response,” Mr Rehn said after two days of informal meetings with other European leaders in Saariskelä, a Finnish hamlet above the Arctic Circle.

Senior European officials said a consensus appeared to be building behind Mr Rehn’s “mid-range” option, which would allow the €440bn European Financial Stability Facility, the current temporary rescue fund, to keep running when a new permanent €500bn fund, called the European Stability Mechanism, starts up in the middle of this year.

That would boost the rescue system’s overall firepower to €940bn, although with about €200bn committed to Greek, Irish and Portuguese bailouts, the total available would be €740bn.

According to an options paper circulated before Friday’s meeting, Mr Rehn’s preferred option would be to make the €940bn combined total permanent but the mid-range option — likely to be Berlin’s favourite — would allow the system to fall back to €500bn once the EFSF expires in mid-2013.

Even though the firewall increase would only be temporary, Mr Rehn’s staff wrote that it was likely to be enough to convince the International Monetary Fund to increase its own resources to $1tn. Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief, has said she will not advocate increasing IMF resources to help reinforce the eurozone firewall unless EU countries act convincingly first.

One senior EU official said the attractiveness of Mr Rehn’s mid-range option was that, unlike making the €940bn permanent, it would not require the German government to go back to the Bundestag for new approvals. It could be backed by finance ministers in Copenhagen and then formalised when the ESM’s board of governors meets.

The only other country that has not publicly backed the increase is Germany’s fellow triple A ally Finland, where increasing the size of the eurozone bailout funds has proved politically controversial.

Jyrki Katainen, the Finnish prime minister, said, in an interview with the Financial Times, he was willing to find a “good compromise” and had “some numbers in my mind” about how large the total should be. He declined to give a specific figure, however, and said he was worried that making the system too large could add to the debt loads of creditor countries, destabilising the eurozone.

“It must be high enough but it can’t be too high, because otherwise the liabilities of the firewall easily become too challenging for the member countries and then it would destroy the credibility of the member countries’ economy,” he said.

Another complicating factor could be Mr Katainen’s insistence that the eurozone receive assurances that the IMF will move forward with its increase before he will agree to an enlarged eurozone fund. IMF shareholders are not due to decide on the issue until spring meetings in Washington next month. Mr Katainen indicated that he may be willing to accept informal assurances.

Qantas of Australia and China Eastern Airlines are to launch Hong Kong’s first budget airline in a landmark deal for foreign participation in the Chinese aviation industry.

Jetstar Hong Kong will be a $198m joint venture in which Qantas and China Eastern hold equal stakes. It plans to start flying next year.

It will be the first time that major Chinese and foreign airlines have together established a passenger airline, with previous partnerships limited to cargo joint ventures or codeshare agreements.

In establishing a budget carrier, Qantas and China Eastern are targeting an under-served segment of the Chinese market. Although air travel has risen in China, the country has little in the way of discount options.

Hong Kong Express, partially owned by China’s Hainan Airlines, has said it wants to convert itself into a budget carrier. Oasis Hong Kong offered low-fare long-haul flights before it stopped flying in 2008 after incurring big losses.

Liu Shaoyong, China Eastern chairman, said ithe Qantas venture was “a key step in China Eastern Airlines’ international expansion strategy and an excellent opportunity … to develop low-cost carrier options to complement its existing business model”.

We “are excited to be the first major Chinese carrier to bring this travel option to the region”, he said.

China Eastern is one of the country’s three major government-owned airlines. While highly profitable, the airlines have been struggling to differentiate their business models and to break into new markets.

Qantas has been losing money in its international operations, but Jetstar, the group’s budget airline, has been a bright spot. It has Asia’s fastest-growing low-fares network by revenue, with airlines in Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.

Alan Joyce, Qantas chief executive, said the Hong Kong venture was “a historic opportunity to continue the successful expansion of the Jetstar brand in this region”.

“We see tremendous potential for the Qantas Group in Asia and we’re looking forward to working more closely with China Eastern Airlines to deliver on it,” he added.

Subject to regulatory approval, Jetstar Hong Kong will take off in 2013 with a fleet of three Airbus 320s, aiming for 18 A320s by 2015. It will offer short-haul flights to Japan, South Korea, south-east Asia and greater China — a region that includes mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Fares will be 50 per cent less than existing full-service carriers, according to Bruce Buchanan, Jetstar chief executive.

Low-cost airlines have done well in the area around Hong Kong, though the main players — AirAsia, Indigo and Lion — are based in Malaysia, India and Indonesia.

In China, where passenger traffic has grown at a double-digit pace for much of the past decade, Spring Airlines is the only budget carrier of note and it is far smaller than its Asian peers.

Hong Kong is a top Asian travel hub, with about 40m passengers a year. Greater China — a region that includes mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan — has an air travel market of nearly 300m passengers per year, which industry groups forecast will grow to 450m by 2015.

Additional reporting by Neil Hume in Sydney