Category: World

REYKJAVIK, June 2, 2008 (AFP) – Iceland and Norway resumed whale meat exports to Japan this year after an 18-year interruption, industry representatives from both Scandinavian countries said.“Iceland and Norway resumed exporting whale meat to Japan,” Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson, president of the Icelandic association representing Minke whale hunters, told AFP. “We (Iceland) have exported to […]

WASHINGTON, June 3, 2008 (AFP) – Amid skyrocketing fuel and food prices, consumers in the United States are hitting the breaks on spending and even discovering the merits of home-grown food. With petrol prices inching toward four dollars a gallon — up 25 percent in just five months — and domestic food inflation up 6.3 […]

WASHINGTON, June 3, 2008 (AFP) – Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday the central bank is “attentive” to the sagging dollar and would look at steps “to guard against risks” to inflation from a weak currency. Bernanke, speaking via satellite to a monetary conference in Barcelona, Spain, offered a mixed assessment of US economic […]

SAO PAULO, June 2, 2008 (AFP) – With its prodigious farm exports and its major industry making ethanol from sugarcane, Brazil is seeking to show that in the food versus biofuel debate at least in its case the two can co-exist. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has challenged critics who claim biofuel production is […]

SHANGHAI, June 2, 2008 (AFP) – China’s foreign exchange reserves rose to 1.76 trillion dollars at the end of April, state media reported Monday, reaching a level higher than the rest of Northeast Asia’s combined.“This (figure) seems to suggest the inflow of hot money is speeding up,” the newspaper quoted Logan Wright, an analyst with […]

ISTANBUL, June 2, 2008 (AFP) – Air travel industry body IATA predicted Monday that airlines would lose 2.3 billion dollars this year dramatically reversing an earlier prediction of profits nearly twice this figure. “Oil skyrocketing above US 130 per barrel has brought us into uncharted territory.Add in the weakening global economy and this is yet […]

WASHINGTON, June 1, 2008 (AFP) – The Democratic Party dealt a severe blow to Hillary Clinton’s fading White House hopes, restoring renegade states Michigan and Florida to its presidential convention, but with halved voting power.Barack Obama, 46 was left two giant strides closer to making history as the first black presidential nominee, with only three […]

LOS ANGELES, May 31, 2008 (AFP) – Oscar-winning US actress Holly Hunter got star treatment Friday, as her name was embedded and her film career honored on Hollywood’s “Walk of Fame.” The 50-year-old actress, her two-year-old twin sons, director Steven Spielberg and actor Ed Harris were all on hand for the unveiling of the 2,363rd […]

DUBAI, May 31, 2008 (AFP) – The Gulf emirate of Dubai on Saturday banned the sale of tobacco to anyone under the age of 20 with immediate effect and barred young people from public areas in which smoking is allowed.The anouncement was made in public advertisements in Arabic-language newspapers as part of a “Youth Without […]

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, May 31, 2008 (AFP) – The first rain from India’s annual monsoon, crucial to millions of farmers and the health of the overall economy, hit the southwest coast on Saturday. The southwest monsoon sweeps the subcontinent from June to September and is an economic lifeline for the 235 million farmers in India where just […]

May 30, Japan (AFP) – A Japanese man puzzled by food mysteriously disappearing from his refrigerator got a shock when he found out a woman had been living in his home for months without permission, police said Friday.The 57-year-old man living alone — or so he thought — in the western city of Fukuoka installed […]

May 30, 2008 (AFP) – As Iran’s economy is buffeted by inflation, the country’s homeowners are fast becoming richer in a real estate bubble that is driving affordable housing beyond the reach of ordinary citizens.Prices have doubled within a few months in satellite town of Parand and Hashtgerd, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Tehran, while […]