Category: Other

NEW YORK, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) – The dollar steadied Friday a day after plunging to a record low on the euro, while the pound fell on jitters after a Bank of England bailout of key British lender Northern Rock.In late New York trade, the dollar stood at 115.35 yen after 115.04 Thursday and 1.1896 […]

LONDON, Sept 13, 2007 (AFP) – The Bank of England has agreed to provide emergency funding to mortgage lender Northern Rock after it fell victim to the liquidity squeeze in the banking sector, media reports said on Thursday.In an interview with the Telegraph published on Thursday, Chancellor of the Exchequer Darling said that in “crude […]

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 13, 2007 (AFP) – Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin park their jet just a stone’s throw from their offices, paying 1.3 million dollars a year for rights at a federally maintained airfield, The New York Times reported Thursday.Why put up with bothersome local traffic when you can shell out a […]

SEOUL, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) – World deaths from “lifestyle” diseases will double by 2015 unless all-out efforts are taken to combat them, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned Friday.It said about 17 million people die prematurely each year as a result of the global epidemic of largely preventable chronic diseases — the leading cause […]

JAKARTA, Sept 13, 2007 (AFP) – Indonesia on Thursday issued a third tsunami warning in the past 24 hours, as a strong aftershock of a 7.7 magnitude rattled Sumatra island, the meteorology office said.The quake hit at 6:49 am (2349 GMT Wednesday), about 140 kilometres (87 miles) southwest of the town of Jambi, in the […]

NEW YORK, Sept 11, 2007 (AFP) – The euro flirted with a new record high against the dollar Tuesday as speculation increased about a Federal Reserve rate cut to help get credit flowing and stave off a US economic downturn.The single European currency fetched 1.3838 dollars at 2100 GMT after 1.3797 late Monday in New […]

JAKARTA, Sept 12, 2007 (AFP) – Southeast Asian nations are gearing up for a palm oil boom as interest in biofuels soars, but activists warn the crop may not satisfy a global thirst for energy that is both clean and green. They caution that oil palm plantations require massive swathes of land — either what’s […]

Sept 12, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka treasury 3-month Treasury bill yields went up 13 basis points to 17.93 percent with the cut-off tripping over 18.00 percent dealers said. The government debt office said 10.7 billion rupees worth of bills were rolled over and 1.8 billion retired at Wednesday’s auction. Six months bills edged up […]

JAKARTA, Sept 12, 2007 (AFP) – A massive 7.9-magnitude quake struck off the western coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Wednesday, prompting authorities to issue a tsunami warning, meteorologists said. The archipelago nation sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity. The undersea earthquake, which hit […]

VIENNA, Sept 11, 2007 (AFP) – OPEC ministers head into crunch talks about the cartel’s output on Tuesday, with signs that the group might bend to the will of Saudi Arabia and increase production.It has an output target of 25.8 million barrels, but the 10 members constrained by output limits are estimated to be producing […]

BEIJING, Sept 11, 2007 (AFP) – China’s inflation hit its highest rate in almost 11 years in August while the nation’s trade surplus soared again, official data showed Tuesday, signalling more interest rate hikes ahead.The United States and other nations argue China’s yuan currency is being kept undervalued, giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage, and […]