Category: World

LONDON, Jan 31, 2008 (AFP) – Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell said on Thursday that net profits leapt 23 percent last year to a record 31.331 billion dollars (21.115 billion euros), energised by soaring crude prices.Net profit on a current cost of supply basis, excluding fluctuations in the value of inventories, rose by 9.0 […]

WASHINGTON, Jan 29, 2008 (AFP) – The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday lowered its 2008 global growth outlook, citing a US slowdown and financial market turmoil that have put emerging economies at risk. The global economy is poised to grow 4.1 percent this year, down 0.3 percentage points from a previous estimate, the IMF report […]

SYDNEY, Jan 30, 2008 (AFP) – Floods in Australia, freezing weather in China and transport bottlenecks in Indonesia have helped stoke a sharp rise in the price of coal, putting pressure on Asian consumer industries. Soaring demand from China and India as their economies steam ahead has also combined to push the cost of the […]

SINGAPORE, Jan 30, 2008 (AFP) – The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC), fresh from multi-billion-dollar capital injections into troubled global financial institutions, has the capacity for an additional bailout, a report said Wednesday. “We will look at any deal that is shown to us.We have a duty to do so. We would still have […]

JAKARTA, Jan 30, 2008 (AFP) – A strong 6.6-magnitude earthquake rocked the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku on Wednesday, prompting the issuing of a tsunami alert, the meteorology and geophysics office said here.The earthquake, which struck at 4:32 pm (0732 GMT) was centered 300 kilometres (185 miles) northeast of the East Timorese capital Dili, some […]

PARIS, Jan 28, 2008 (AFP) – French judges placed rogue trader Jerome Kerviel under formal investigation on Monday but stopped short of charging him with fraud and decided he could walk free from police custody.Shares in Societe Generale, where Kerviel is alleged to have lost more than seven billion dollars, took a battering as allegations […]

OSLO, Jan 29, 2008 (AFP) – Perhaps the most unlikely victims of the US subprime crisis are eight small Norwegian towns currently licking their wounds after seeing tens of millions of dollars in risky investments go up in smoke.A soaring number of defaults on US subprime mortgages, or loans made to people with poor credit […]

TOKYO, Jan 29, 2008 (AFP) – The dollar slipped against the yen in Asian trade on Tuesday as traders bet on another US interest rate cut this week to try to ward off a US recession, dealers said.The dollar slipped to 106.71 yen in Tokyo midday trade from 106.87 in New York late Monday. But […]

PARIS, Jan 27, 2008 (AFP) – French investigators on Sunday extended the detention of accused rogue trader Jerome Kerviel over a seven-billion-dollar fraud as Societe Generale revealed he had been gambling with more than 73 billion dollars in deals when caught.“What happened at Societe Generale is certainly not a disaster that resulted from our strategy. […]

JAKARTA, Jan 28, 2008 (AFP) – An airliner with 141 passengers hit a calf while landing at an airport in Indonesia’s easternmost province of Papua, the state Antara news agency reported Monday.The Merpati Nusantara Airlines Boeing 737 was landing at Merauke airport in southwest Papua when the calf ran across the runway, the agency said. […]

Jan 28, 2008 (AFP) – Tamil Tiger rebels Monday shelled Sri Lanka’s main military base in the island’s north, defence officials said.There were no immediate reports of casualties. More than a dozen shells hit the Palaly military complex in the Jaffna peninsula on the northern edge of the Indian Ocean Island, officials said, adding that […]

SYDNEY, Jan 27, 2008 (AFP) – Turbulence on world stock markets has fuelled a new gold rush, sending high-tech traders in search of the same “barbaric” treasure mankind has lusted after for millennia. It was British economist John Maynard Keynes who called gold a “barbaric relic” early last century, but modern investors are showing the […]