Category: Other

HONG KONG, May 4, 2008 (AFP) – Rationing, subsidies, price-fixing cartels, export curbs — you name it, governments across the world are trying it out as they seek to shield their populations from the soaring price of rice.Wary of the political risk of millions of hungry people on their doorstep, some governments — notably in […]

MADRID, May 4, 2008 (AFP) – Asian nations are in talks over the creation of a multinational 80-billion-dollar (52-billion-euro) foreign exchange pool to be used in case of another regional financial crisis, Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga said Sunday in Spain. “We are negotiating in that direction,” he told reporters at the annual meeting of […]

MADRID, May 4, 2008 (AFP) – India’s inflation rate, which jumped to a more than three-year high last month, is a “big concern” for the government as it heads towards a general election due by May 2009, Indian Finance Secretary Subba Rao said Sunday in Spain.“I must say inflation has been a concern, inflation is […]

SAN FRANCISCO, May 2, 2008 (AFP) – Microsoft and Yahoo began takeover talks Friday with the US software giant open to raising its 44.6-billion-dollar bid for the struggling Internet pioneer, a source close to the situation told AFP. Yahoo and its unsolicited suitor are privately discussing the buyout bid after months of negotiating indirectly with […]

WASHINGTON, May 2, 2008 (AFP) – International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said Friday that he does not see the US economy recovering from its current doldrums this year.Describing a US government labor report Friday that showed fewer than expected job losses as a “flash in the pan,” the IMF managing director said “the medium-term […]

JAKARTA, May 3, 2008 (AFP) – India’s Tata Steel could bid for a stake in Indonesia’s largest steel maker PT Krakatau Steel, according to a report here Saturday.“Tata (Steel) has also expressed their interest in finding out more details in the Krakatau Steel privatisation,” the industry ministry’s director general for metal, Ansari Bukhari, told state-run […]

DHAKA, May 3, 2008 (AFP) – Bangladesh garment manufacturers on Saturday said they would distribute subsidised rice to thousands of some of the world’s lowest-paid workers to help them cope with sky-rocketing food prices.The announcement came after around 20,000 textile workers rioted in one of the main garment-making areas near the capital Dhaka last month, […]

KUALA LUMPUR, May 3, 2008 (AFP) – Malaysia’s prime minister said Saturday his government would delay non-essential projects and use funds to secure the country’s food supply amid spiralling global food prices. The government announced on Friday that it would spend 2.49 billion ringgit (778 million dollars) this year to boost food production as worldwide […]

PARIS, May 2, 2008 (AFP) – The UN’s new top advisor on food blamed two decades of wrong-headed policies by world powers for the food crisis sweeping the globe, in a stinging interview published on his first day in office Friday.Frenchman Olivier de Schutter, a law professor and human rights campaigner, told Le Monde newspaper […]

BEIJING, May 1, 2008 (AFP) – Chinese authorities inspected more than 3,600 businesses in a major export city at the centre of a child labour scandal, state press reported Thursday, after children were found working in factories.The children, aged from nine to 16, worked long hours in factories in the city of Dongguan for about […]