Category: World

WASHINGTON, Oct 12, 2007 (AFP) – A former top US military commander in Iraq said Friday that the current White House strategy in Iraq will not achieve victory in the four-and-a-half-year war, which he described as “a nightmare with no end in sight.” In the bluntest assessment of Iraq by a former senior Pentagon official […]

BEIJING, Oct 12, 2007 (AFP) – China’s foreign exchange reserves, already the world’s largest, surpassed 1.43 trillion dollars at the end of September, the central bank said Friday. The figure was up 45.1 percent from a year earlier, the central bank said in a statement posted on its website. The news came the same day […]

LONDON, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) – The price of platinum forged a record high on Thursday as the white metal was hit by tight global supplies, while gold soared to the best level since 1980 on the back of the weak US dollar, analysts said. Platinum surged as high as 1,408.50 dollars an ounce on […]

SINGAPORE, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) – The Singapore dollar was trading at 10-year highs against the greenback on Wednesday after the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) signalled a slight tightening of its policy, dealers said.In morning trade the local unit was at 1.4665 to the US dollar, up from 1.4752 on Tuesday. MAS, the de […]

Oct 10, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Colombo Dockyard, the island’s sole listed ship builder, is bidding for three new local ship building contracts, including one from the navy where it has tied up with a Croatian yard, officials said. The yard, a subsidiary of Japan’s Onomichi Dockyard Co. which provides management and technical expertise, […]

NEW DELHI, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) – Renowned coach Dav Whatmore has accepted a job with India’s cricket academy four months after being snubbed for the post of the national team’s head coach.The former Australian Test batsman, 53, will take over as director of operations at the Bangalore-based National Cricket Academy later this month, the […]

LUXEMBOURG, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) – The European Union’s top monetary affairs official urged China on Tuesday to allow its currency to trade more freely in foreign exchange markets as EU finance chiefs prepared for an upcoming G7 meeting. “China and other emerging economies should introduce more flexibility in their exchange rate management,” EU Economic […]

PARIS, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) – India can reach its target of annual economic growth of 10 percent by 2011 if the country concentrates reforms on reducing the role of the state in the economy, an OECD report said on Tuesday. The Paris-based economic institute urged the government to loosen “restrictive” labour laws and “inefficient” […]

MUMBAI, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) – Indian shares prices hit a record high Tuesday with the benchmark Sensex index vaulting the psychologically key 18,000-point level for the first time. Dealers said support for the market came from information technology and oil refinery stocks on hopes of a strong second quarter earnings performance. The Sensex was […]

MANILA, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) – A proposal by the Philippine parliament to spend 22 million dollars buying condoms and birth control pills has been condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, it was reported Monday.The president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, told the Manila Standard Today that the money […]

RIYADH, Oct 7, 2007 (AFP) – Saudi Arabia’s religious police have arrested a domestic worker accused of having put a spell on her employer, the Al-Madina newspaper reported on Sunday.The arrest of the maid, whose nationality was not revealed, followed a complaint by the wife of the employer who she said had been “bewitched by […]