Category: World

May, 2008 (AFP) – Export-driven Asian economies are shifting away from a strategy of keeping currencies weak against the US dollar in an indication of troubling times for the region, a US think tank said Wednesday. Central banks in Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and South Korea on Tuesday reportedly began selling dollars to shore up […]

May 29, 2008 (AFP – India’s top vehicle maker Tata Motors reported a slight fall in annual profit on Wednesday as it announced a capital raising plan to fund its purchase of British luxury icons Jaguar and Land Rover. The company, part of the steel-to-tea Tata Group conglomerate, reported net profit fell to 21.67 billion […]

May 29, 2008 (AFP) – A slowdown looms for India’s economy amid global financial turmoil even though it may post better-than-expected growth for last year in official data due on Friday, economists say. Just as positive global factors supported India’s expansion earlier, “negative global factors,” such as surging commodity prices and growing investor risk aversion, […]

Nepal’s ousted king Gyanendra is packing his belongings and planning to leave his palace in Kathmandu on Friday in line with a two-week deadline, a prominent newspaper editor told AFP Thursday. “According to our sources, the King is packing up his personal belongings to move out of the palace,” Kishore Shrestha, editor of the Nepali-language […]

WASHINGTON, May 27, 2008 (AFP) – The Pentagon’s internal watchdog office has warned in a report to Congress made public Tuesday that its auditors are unable to keep pace with a ballooning US defense budget.The rapid growth of the defense budget to more than 600 billion dollars “leaves the department increasingly more vulnerable to fraud, […]

NEW YORK, May 27, 2008 (AFP) – Oil prices tumbled further from recent record peaks Tuesday as traders sold off positions amid growing fears about energy US energy demand, analysts said.They said a report showing a slump in US consumer confidence, marking the largest such fall in 16 years, and a separate survey showing the […]

May 28, 2008 (AFP) – African leaders on Wednesday lashed out at rich nations for failing to tackle trade inequalities even as they make lofty pledges to boost aid.The leaders, in Japan for a major development conference, urged industrialised nations to make it easier for them to export food, coffee and other products at fair […]

May 28, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s government debt office rejected bids to buy 8.5 billion rupees of treasury bills Wednesday, selling 3.2 billion rupees through the auction. The government sold 2.0 billion rupees of 6-months bills at 18.14 percent, down 16 basis points from last week. The yield on 12-month bills also fell 10 […]

LONDON, May 27, 2008 (AFP) – A recession in the United States remains a probability, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said in an interview published Tuesday. Speaking to the Financial Times from Washington, Greenspan said he believed “there is a greater than 50 percent probability of recession.” He noted, however, that “that probability has […]

HANOI, May 27, 2008 (AFP) – Vietnamese consumer prices surged by over 25 percent in May compared to the same month last year, a trend driven mainly by sharply higher food prices, the communist government said Tuesday. Prices shot up an estimated 3.91 percent between April and May alone, a period that saw some panic-buying […]

BEIJING, May 27, 2008 (AFP) – China plans to create three telecom giants as it seeks to bring balance back to an industry where mobile operators have seen the fastest growth by far, the government and state press said Tuesday.Under the plan, the world’s biggest mobile operator China Mobile will acquire fixed-line operator China Tietong […]

NAIROBI, May 25, 2008 (AFP) – A nationwide power outage hit Kenya on Sunday as a result of a transmission fault from its hydro-electric plants, officials said, sparking panic in the east African nation. The hydro-electric plants’ owners, official power generator KenGen, produces about 80 percent of electricity consumed in the country, using hydro, geothermal, […]