Category: World

TEHRAN, August 3, 2008 (AFP) – Iran, the number two oil producer in OPEC, expects the cartel to discuss ways of controlling the quotas of member countries at its next meeting in September, the official news agency IRNA said.“In case of the continuation of a downward trend in oil price, one of the serious discussions […]

KUALA LUMPUR, August 3, 2008 (AFP) – Malaysia’s state-owned carmaker Proton is developing a new, fuel-efficient hybrid car to beat rising costs and address environmental concerns, reports said Sunday.Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told the state Bernama news agency he had already test-driven the car and urged the company to continue researching energy-saving technologies. “The […]

WASHINGTON, August 1, 2008 (AFP) – General Motors posted Friday a whopping 15.5-billion-dollar net loss in the second quarter as the US auto giant took hefty restructuring charges and US sales skidded.The bleak earnings reported by the largest US automaker coincided with news of a seventh straight month of US nonfarm job losses that stoked […]

NEW DELHI, July 31, 2008 (AFP) – India said on Thursday it was willing to return to the negotiating table to work out a new global trade deal but warned it would not make any compromises that could hurt poor farmers.It also pinned the blame for the talks’ collapse earlier this week in Geneva squarely […]

CARACAS, August 1, 2008 (AFP) – Leftist President Hugo Chavez on Thursday said he will nationalize the Bank of Venezuela, one of the country’s largest, and has asked the bank’s Spanish owners, Grupo Santander, for a meeting to set a price for the deal. “We’re going to nationalize Bank of Venezuela. I’m calling on (Grupo […]

GENEVA, August 1, 2008 (AFP) – Talks at a technical level are under way at the World Trade Organization on safeguard issues that ended marathon negotiations on a global trade deal this week, WTO head Pascal Lamy revealed on Friday.He told journalists it was necessary to overcome the safeguard technical issue that had caused the […]

NEW DELHI, August 1, 2008 (AFP) – India said Friday it plans a global auction for the airwaves needed to offer high-speed third generation or 3G mobile phone services, a move that could rake in billions of dollars for the government.The long-awaited decision will allow foreign players the chance to enter the world’s fastest-growing mobile […]

OTTAWA, July 30, 2008 (AFP) – Auto sales in places like Brazil, India and China are expected to drive world demand to new records despite a sales slump in Europe and the United States, a Canadian bank said Wednesday.Global car sales advanced a mere 1.5 percent in the first half of 2008, undercut by slowing […]

NEW YORK, July 31, 2008 (AFP) – US energy giant ExxonMobil on Thursday reported a 14 percent jump in quarterly net profits to a record 11.68 billion dollars in results below most forecasts on Wall Street. The second-quarter earnings amounted to 2.27 dollars per share excluding special items compared with an average forecast of 2.52 […]

LONDON, July 31, 2008 (AFP) – Anglo-Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch Shell said on Thursday that high oil prices helped push its net profit up by a third to 11.556 billion dollars (7.409 billion euros) in the second quarter. Profits rocketed despite flagging production which was hampered by violence at facilities in Nigeria. Output fell […]

GENEVA, July 30, 2008 (AFP) – Ministers saw a “new order” take hold of global trade Wednesday, with emerging economies calling the shots after WTO plans collapsed in a potentially devastating blow to millions of the world’s poor. “One thing that we can celebrate is that deals here are no longer made just by the […]

LOS ANGELES, July 30, 2008 (AFP) – Los Angeles officials on Tuesday approved a one-year ban on fast-food chains opening in a poor neighborhood of the city battling higher-than-average obesity, officials said.The moratorium covers the 500,000 people living in the 32-square mile area of South Los Angeles, which is predominantly Hispanic and African-American. Designed to […]