WILMINGTON, N.C., May 17 (UPI) — General Electric Co. and Japan-based Hitachi announced plans to create a global alliance of their nuclear businesses.

Interest in nuclear energy has been revitalized as concerns over energy security and climate change continue to grow.

Based on this agreement, which was first announced in November 2006, GE and Hitachi will form cross-shareholding companies in the United States, Canada and Japan, subject to government approvals, combining the two companies’ nuclear businesses. Plans are also in the works to create a leading nuclear power plant. The deal is expected to close later this year.

The two will collaborate on the new plant’s construction using proven modularization and standardization capabilities together with the latest-generation reactors.

GE’s nuclear business develops advanced light water reactors and provides products and services to help owners of boiling and pressurized water reactors. Hitachi business focuses on nuclear power systems and has been a part of the company’s portfolio since 1955.

Financial details were not disclosed, but shares of GE went up following the announcement.

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia might impose new restrictions on foreign investment in response to the U.S. strengthening of control over purchases made by foreign companies in the United States.

Putin said Russia was concerned about recently passed U.S. legislation intended to tighten national security reviews of proposed foreign investment, which he described as a “step away from liberal economics.”

“We remember the time when our economic potential, including in the investment sphere, was limited and we were being told from abroad that we should open our economy as widely as possible and offer investment opportunities to foreign companies,” Putin said during a trip to the United Arab Emirates.

“Now when we have got such potential, other countries, our partners are taking steps in the opposite direction and effectively close or create conditions for closing their markets for investment,” he said. “Of course, that causes our concern.”

In televised comments, Putin specifically referred to a new bill signed by President George W. Bush in July, which envisages participation by high-level officials, including the director of national intelligence, in decisions concerning the security implications of direct foreign investment.

The new law extends the scope of national security to cover deals involving critical infrastructure and energy, and requires a second-stage investigation of most proposed acquisitions by state-owned companies.

“In our opinion, that may result in certain restrictions on investment activities,” Putin said. He added that Russia long had considered a similar legislation and refrained from passing it, but that it may change its mind now after the passage of the U.S. law and as similar legislation was being considered in Europe.

“If it continues like that, we will have to take corresponding steps to protect our investment,” Putin said.

Putins cabinet has worked inconclusively for four years on new legislation regulating subsoil resources. But officials have stated repeatedly that foreign companies would be barred from having majority interests in oil or gas deposits over a certain size deemed by the government to be “strategic.”

In recent months, foreign oil companies have been forced to cede control of a number of major projects which they acquired in the 1990s, most notably with the sale by Royal Dutch Shell of a controlling stake in the Sakhalin-2 project, and BPs sale of its stake in the Kovykta gas field.

The Russian state-run natural gas monopoly Gazprom was the buyer of both.

Meanwhile, a leading financier based in Moscow said Monday that Russia needed to guarantee the rule of law and keep government out of business to guarantee future prosperity

Boris Jordan, who helped advise on the first Russian privatizations in the 1990s and now runs a $2 billion private equity and advisory firm named the Sputnik Group, said Russia had made huge progress since the rocky first days of capitalism.

“The economic reform process, particularly over the last four years, in my opinion, has come to a grinding halt,” Jordan said at an investment conference in Moscow.

“The big question is the rule of law,” he said.

He added, “Probably the single biggest thing business in Russia today suffers from is that you cant really expect to get a proper court hearing.”

LOS ANGELES: In the race to become a major supplier of original video programming to the Web, Warner Bros. has decided to reverse its direction.

The studio, part of Time Warner, plans to introduce 24 Web productions in a variety of formats including minimovies, games and episodic television shows.

But for this latest online push, Warner Bros. has discarded its initial strategy of insisting that advertisers pay for production costs from the start. Instead, it has decided to finance most projects itself and line up advertisers to recoup costs later.

“In trying to get the business off the ground,” said Craig Hunegs, executive vice president for business development, “we ended up in a bit of a dance with advertisers about what various projects would look like.”

The shift underlines a growing realization among the big Hollywood studios: Web entertainment is evolving so quickly that they must take on more financial risk to keep up.

So far, Warner and most other traditional studios have tried to lock down a comfortable, low-risk business model before venturing too far online. That approach has slowed them down, delivering a competitive edge to scrappier upstart production companies.

In the year since Warner moved into original production for the Web, it has delivered just one project: “Hardly News,” a satirical pop-culture quiz show that had its premiere on Anheuser-Buschs entertainment Web site, Bud.TV, in April. It failed to gain an audience, although the studio is not giving up on the concept and is weighing new distribution options.

“We may have initially had a narrow view,” said Bruce Rosenblum, president of Warner Bros. Television Group, which houses the studios digital production unit. He is now operating on the idea that as long as the studio churns out quality digital entertainment, advertising dollars will follow.

The slate of short-form Web productions that Warner plans to announce are already deep in the production pipeline and range across genres including science fiction and animation.

“The Jeannie Tate Show,” created by Liz Cackowski, is a series about a neurotic soccer mom who presents a television talk show from her minivan. A puppet comedy for adults from Jim Henson Co., unofficially titled “The Simian Undercover Detective Squad,” follows a group of ape investigators.

The comedy projects can hit close to home. A mockumentary titled “Viral,” from Joey Manderino and David Young, looks at the dysfunction that overtakes a digital studio as it tries to come up with the next big online hit.

The studio says that a half-dozen more video projects are in development, including an animated offshoot of “The Wizard of Oz” and an online dating game produced by Lauren Graham of “Gilmore Girls.” Joseph McGinty Nichol, a director of the “Charlies Angels” movies, also has a project in the works.

Although Warner is spending more cash up front, executives say that the combined budget for the 24 projects is less than $3 million, or the approximate cost of one episode of a high-end television drama. Rosenblum has distribution plans for most of its new digital entertainment, and RealNetworks has agreed to distribute the Jim Henson project.

With other projects, Hunegs said, programming will appear on Joost and other video portals. Warner plans to sell its digital projects to advertisers through its own media sales unit.

The studio is trying to gain traction in an increasingly crowded field. More than a dozen new production companies are angling for a share of the exploding online video business. Among the upstarts achieving early success is Vuguru, a new media company backed by Michael Eisner, former chief of Walt Disney.

Brent Weinstein, chief executive of 60Frames Entertainment, a digital studio co-founded by the United Talent Agency, said, “We can get things to market a lot quicker than traditional media companies because we arent hamstrung by all their legal and rights issues.”

The agency, like most of its rivals, is building an internal unit devoted to scouting up-and-coming creators of Internet content and to securing new media deals for existing clients with the likes of Warner.

Jason Nadler, director of UTA Online, said, “Artists know the Web is a great place to both showcase their talent and incubate new ideas without the pressure of delivering a full-blown movie or television hit out of the gate.”

Although Warners digital venture, Studio 2.0, has gotten off to a slow start, the company has emerged as a leader in other areas of Web entertainment.

Rosenblum announced a deal in 2006 to allow local television stations that buy reruns of the Warner-produced comedy “Two and a Half Men” to stream the episodes on their Web sites. The studios TMZ.com, a Web celebrity tabloid, has grown so popular since its debut in December that Warner will introduce a television spinoff this week.