Category: World

TOKYO, October 14, 2008 (AFP) – Japan’s government on Tuesday announced measures aimed at stabilising the ailing stock market, including a loosening of restrictions on companies buying back their own shares.The moves helped to fuel a powerful rally on the Tokyo stock market, which soared more than 12 percent in early trade as investors cheered […]

KUWAIT CITY, October 14, 2008 (AFP) – Stocks in the booming Gulf emirate of Dubai leapt nine percent at the opening of trade on Tuesday, leading gains in the oil-rich Gulf as global markets made a spectacular surge. Abu Dhabi and Oman each jumped six percent, but the Kuwait Stock Exchange, the second largest Arab […]

WASHINGTON, October 14, 2008 (AFP) – The US government will spend up to 250 billion dollars to buy shares in struggling banks in the latest effort to stem a global financial crisis, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Tuesday.“Yet the alternative of leaving businesses and consumers without access to financing is totally unacceptable. When financing isn’t […]

REYKJAVIK, October 14, 2008 (AFP) – Trading resumed on the Reykjavik stock exchange Tuesday and the main index showed a decline of 76.13 percent, but market officials insisted this figure was heavily distorted by the absence of trading in finance companies. Excluding Iceland’s comatose financial stocks, which were suspended more than a week ago and […]

SYDNEY, October 14, 2008 (AFP) – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Tuesday unveiled a 10.4 billion dollar (7.25 billion US) economic stimulus package to counter a slowdown caused by the global financial crisis. “The global financial crisis has entered into a new dangerous and damaging phase, one that goes to the real economy — […]

NEW YORK, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – US banking giant Morgan Stanley on Sunday was trying to salvage a nine-billion-dollar deal to sell 21 percent of its capital to Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, The New York Times said Sunday. Negotiations between the two banks amid the current global market turmoil were seen as crucial […]

MANILA, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – There are few countries in the world where you will not find a Filipino worker.Even in tiny Iceland, one of the countries hardest hit by the financial crisis, there were 1,411 at last count. At any given time, about 10 percent of the Philippines’ 90 million population is hard […]

SEOUL, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – South Korea’s government said Monday it will allow conglomerates and other non-banking firms to buy a bigger stake in local banks to ease privatisation and guard against the global financial crisis. Under a law to be submitted to parliament next month, the conglomerates — known as chaebol — and […]

BERLIN, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – Germany was to unveil Monday a 470-billion-euro rescue package to save the country’s banks from collapse, government sources said, after European leaders hammered out a common approach at a high-stakes weekend summit. Government sources in Europe’s biggest economy said that the package would include around 70 billion euros (95 […]

WASHINGTON, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – The United States is ready to buy equity in a “broad array” of financial institutions, the Treasury’s pointman on a 700 billion dollar bank bailout, Neel Kashkari, said Monday. “We are designing a standardized program to purchase equity in a broad array of financial institutions,” Kashkari said in a […]

WASHINGTON, October 11, 2008 (AFP) – The International Monetary Fund said Saturday it was ready to lend to countries in need of capital, as the 15 eurozone economies and Britain redied a Paris summit to seek a joint response to the global financial crisis. “Using its emergency procedures, the Fund stands ready to quickly make […]

CANNES, October 12, 2008 (AFP) – A golden age for television beckons as established TV companies go head on with the Internet and other new digital media platforms to woo audiences worldwide.And with a fast growing variety of new forms of audiovisual entertainment being rolled out for audiences of all ages, viewers are firmly in […]