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BOMBAY (Bloomberg) ? Flag Telecom Group Ltd., which operates a global fibre-optic network, said shareholders approved the acquisition of the company by Reliance Infocomm Ltd., the telecommunications unit of India's Reliance Group.

Hamilton, Bermuda-based Flag Telecom said more than 88 percent of shareholders voted in favour of the purchase at a meeting in New York.

Mumbai-based Reliance's $211 million bid for Flag will be its first overseas acquisition and will give it access to a 31,000-mile fibre-optic network worldwide.

NEW YORK (Bloomberg) ? Bermuda-registered Bunge Ltd., the world's biggest oilseed processor, said it has agreed in principle to form a joint venture with AGRI Industries, an Iowa farmer-owned co-operative, to market grain and operate Mississippi River terminals.

The new venture will be called AGRI-Bunge LLC, Bunge said in a statement. The proposed venture would combine operations of Bunge's Albany, Illinois, grain elevator and Agri Industries' grain elevators in Burlington and McGregor, Iowa, and Fulton, Illinois.

NEW YORK (Bloomberg) ? Network Associates Inc., the maker of McAfee computer-security software, said the spread of a computer virus named Beagle that propagates through e-mail is accelerating.

Network Associates raised its alert rating for the program from "low" to "medium" because an increasing number of personal computers are becoming infected, the company said on its Web site. Beagle arrives in e-mail as a message attachment. Once activated, it downloads a second program that receives commands to perform malicious actions on the infected PC.

CHICAGO (Bloomberg) ? AMR Corp.'s American Airlines canceLled a $6 roundtrip fare increase four days after implementing it, said Tom Parsons, who monitors airline prices at online travel agent Bestfares.com.

American rivals Delta Air Lines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp. declined to match the increase, while UAL Corp.'s United Airlines and Continental Airlines Inc. raised their fares by the same amount, Parsons said.

The increase was removed from travel agent systems this morning, Parsons said. American called the move, made on Thursday, a "surcharge" and said it was part of efforts to offset rising fuel costs.

PARIS (Reuters) ? French insurer Axa could start buying European life insurers and money managers once it completes a $1.5 billion purchase of US insurer MONY, seeking to further widen its geographic reach, analysts say.

Such acquisitions would resemble the MONY deal in size and give Axa, Europe's largest insurer by sales, the scale needed to dominate these businesses in high-growth regions like southern Europe, where it remains relatively weak, analysts say.