Category: World

WASHINGTON, October 30, 2008 (AFP) – The US Federal Reserve sliced its key interest rate another 0.5 percentage points to 1.0 percent Wednesday as signs emerged of thawing credit markets around the world. The Fed’s expected action came after China also chopped its benchmark one-year deposit rate by 27 basis points to 3.60 in a […]

SYDNEY, October 30, 2008 (AFP) – Australia’s Westpac Banking Group announced Thursday that its annual net profit rose 12 percent, driven by strong deposit and lending growth.Net profit for the year ended September 30 rose to 3.86 billion dollars (2.58 billion US) from 3.45 billion dollars the previous year, the bank said in a statement. […]

WASHINGTON, October 29, 2008 (AFP) – The US Treasury said Wednesday it had finalized the infusion of 125 billion dollars into nine major commercial banks as part of a financial system rescue plan. Officials said Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo each received 25 billion dollars in capital. Bank of America got 15 billion […]

WASHINGTON, October 30, 2008 (AFP) – The US economy contracted at a 0.3 percent pace in the third quarter as a global credit crunch prompted consumers and businesses to retrench, government data showed Thursday.The drop in gross domestic product (GDP) was the first negative figure since the fourth quarter of 2007, the Commerce Department reported […]

LONDON, October 30, 2008 (AFP) – Oil prices slipped back on Thursday in volatile trade, reversing early gains as the market reacted to news of shrinking economic growth in the United States, the world’s top energy consumer. An overnight cut in US interest rates, along with a similar move in China, had earlier bolstered prices […]

DUBAI, October 28, 2008 (AFP) – Cheaper oil prices may damage the economies of non-oil producing Arab countries because of a fall in remittances and other cash inflows from the Gulf states, analysts said. Remittances sent home by migrant workers contributed three billion dollars or 20 percent of gross domestic product in Jordan last year, […]

BEIJING, October 29, 2008 (AFP) – Supermarkets in Beijing stopped selling eggs from one of China’s major producers on Wednesday as fears about the toxic chemical melamine spread to the Chinese capital. The retailers acted after Hong Kong health authorities said they had detected melamine, which has killed four babies and sickened 53,000 in China, […]

SAMUT PRAKAN, October 29, 2008 (AFP) – At the Elite Thai Leather factory in Bangkok, craftsman contort tough Thai crocodile hides into any style of luxury handbag a fashion designer wants. To receive instant alerts from LBO on your Dialog mobile type ‘lbo’ and send to 678 Bright blue handbags made from the dyed rough […]

JAKARTA, October 29, 2008 (AFP) – A former governor of Indonesia’s central bank was sentenced to five years in jail and a relative of President Susilo Bambang was named a suspect Wednesday in a snowballing corruption scandal. Burhanuddin Abdullah was convicted in the anti-corruption court of embezzling 10.3 million dollars in bank funds to bribe […]

NEW YORK, October 28, 2008 (AFP) – A frenzied buying spree sent US shares soaring Tuesday with the second-largest point gain in history for blue chips amid hopes for a rate cut and easing of a global credit crunch. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rocketed 889.35 points (10.88 percent) to finish at 9,065.12. The gain […]

LONDON, October 28, 2008 (AFP) – Britain’s central bank urged new constraints on banks Tuesday to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis, saying there needed to be a “fundamental rethink” of how the institutions manage risk. The Bank of England warned banks had overextended themselves during the economic boom years, lending out more than […]

WASHINGTON, October 28, 2008 (AFP) – The Federal Reserve opens a two-day meeting Tuesday widely expected to cut key interest rates further as part of an unrelenting effort by the central bank to restore confidence to battered markets. The US central bank, which led a coordinated global rate cut earlier this month that pushed its […]