Category: World

ESSEN, Germany, Feb 10, 2007 (AFP) – Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers and central bank chiefs called Saturday for “vigilance” on hedge funds, a trillion-dollar industry that has grown strongly and rapidly in recent years. “Given the strong growth of the hedge fund industry and the instruments they trade, we need to be vigilant,” […]

BEIJING, Feb 9, 2007 (AFP) – China is catching up with India in providing call centre services, one of the fastest-growing areas of global outsourcing, Chinese state media and a research firm said Friday. The number of employees at call centres in China is likely to rise 22 percent in 2007 to 158,000, while in […]

DHAKA, Feb 9, 2007 (AFP) – Two more Bangladeshi politicians including a former minister have been detained as part of the interim government’s anti-corruption drive, officials said Friday.The arrests bring the number detained to 25, ten of whom are former ministers. The detainees have links to both the main political parties. Outgoing junior energy minister […]

GENEVA, Feb 7, 2007 (AFP) – Chinese international patent applications more than doubled in 2006, reflecting a “changing geography of demand” along with other Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, the World Intellectual Property Organisation said on Wednesday.China filed 3,910 patents under the aegis of WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in 2006, up […]

PARIS, Feb 5, 2007 (AFP) – A former child soldier from Sierra Leone who started killing at the age of 12 opened an international conference on Monday with an appeal for action to stop the exploitation of children in war.“At that time, taking a gun and shooting somebody had become as easy as drinking a […]

FRANKFURT, Feb 4, 2007 (AFP) – The current weakness of the Japanese yen is likely to top the agenda when finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the Group of Seven (G7) countries gather in the western city of Essen next weekend. But if European governments entertained any hope the club of the world’s seven […]

BEIJING, Feb 2, 2007 (AFP) – China plans a special firm to manage one fifth of its forex reserves, laying the foundations of a behemoth that will handle more money than the biggest mutual fund in the world, state media said Friday.The State Foreign Exchange Investment Company is expected to be in charge of 210 […]

HARARE, Jan 31, 2007 (AFP) – Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono on Wednesday unveiled a battery of belt-tightening measures including slashed money supply to put the brakes on four-digit inflation.Gono however did not devalue the local currency, saying it was no panacea. “The urgency of the need to reduce inflation impels that 2007 be […]

SINGAPORE, Jan 30, 2007 (AFP) – The world’s coal industry needs to sharpen up its act in order to meet tougher environmental standards amid increasing global concern over rising greenhouse gas emissions, experts said Tuesday.Mulyono added it was “unavoidable” for Indonesia, a major coal producer and exporter, to market low-grade coal because of domestic and […]

MADRID, Jan 29, 2007 (AFP) – The number of tourists worldwide rose 4.5 percent last year from 2005 to reach a record 842 million, with Africa showing the sharpest gain, the World Tourism Organisation reported Monday.It forecast an increase of 4.0 percent in tourist numbers in 2007, noting that the trend was now toward a […]

LONDON, Jan 29, 2007 (AFP) – British insurance group Prudential on Monday exited the consumer banking sector with the sale of its loss-making Internet bank arm Egg to US giant Citigroup for 575 million pounds in cash.Analysts welcomed the news, which leaves Prudential to concentrate on insurance and asset management, but said the price fell […]

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 28, 2007 (AFP) – When US Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss mentioned his doubts about climate change during a debate at the World Economic Forum last Friday, gasps emerged from the business-minded audience.“Whether it’s something that we need to be totally alarmed about, or nature taking its course, I don’t know,” said the […]