Category: World

BANGKOK, May 8, 2008 (AFP) – Thailand said Thursday it would provide 500,000 tonnes of rice to Malaysia in an emergency purchase as the latter’s national stockpile had enough supplies to last only 15 days.Government spokesman Wichainchot Sukchotrat said Malaysian agriculture minister Mustafa Mohamed met with Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on Thursday to discuss […]

ATHENS, May 7, 2008 (AFP) – The European Central Bank is widely expected to leave its key interest rate unchanged again Thursday, focusing as it is mandated to do on inflation rather than the risk to growth, analysts say.The ECB governing council meets here at a twice-annual event organised in a eurozone capital, hosted this […]

May 7, 2008 ( LBO) – The Indian Ocean Island of Maldives is in the final stages of wrapping up its new constitution, which will pave the way for the nation’s first multi-party elections this year, officials said Tuesday.Political parties have only been legal on the 1,192 coral islands since 2005 when President Maumoon Abdul […]

DUBAI, May 7, 2008 (AFP) – The United Arab Emirates, whose booming economy functions thanks to millions of foreign workers, has been urged to put a six-year cap on their residency, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.The internal affairs and defence committee of the consultative Federal National Council (FNC), said the workers should leave the […]

BANGALORE, India, May 7, 2008 (AFP) – Bharti Airtel, India’s top mobile-phone operator, said Wednesday it had joined a consortium to build a 700-million-dollar submarine cable system. Bharti signed a construction and maintenance agreement in London for the Europe India Gateway (EIG), the first high-bandwidth, optical-fibre cable system from India to Britain, the company said. […]

YANGON, May 6, 2008 (AFP) – More than 15,000 people were killed in Myanmar’s devastating cyclone, the government said Tuesday, with thousands more feared dead after the storm left rice fields littered with corpses. Aid workers were racing to deliver food and water to the southern coast which was submerged by floodwaters, leaving scenes of […]

BANGKOK, May 6, 2008 (AFP) – The deadly cyclone that struck Myanmar devastated its main rice-growing region, and could threaten exports meant to ease shortages in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the UN food agency said Tuesday. Flooding, which poured damaging salt water into paddy fields, could create long-term food insecurity for Myanmar and other poor […]

LONDON, May 6, 2008 (AFP) – Oil prices hit a record high 122 dollars here on Tuesday as the market was driven by concerns over violence in key producer Nigeria and a struggling US currency, analysts said. After spiking to a fresh high, New York’s main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for June delivery, […]

LONDON, May 6, 2008 (AFP) – Yahoo’s Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang defended his handling of failed takeover negotiations with Microsoft and said he remains open to an offer from the US software giant, in an interview published Tuesday in the Financial Times. Yang told the paper he was willing to negotiate but Microsoft pulled […]

YANGON, May 6, 2008 (AFP) – Myanmar’s military rulers were under fire Tuesday after revealing more than 10,000 people died in the cyclone that battered the secretive and impoverished nation, with thousands more missing. As relief agencies scrambled to get food, clean water and supplies into a country that normally scorns foreign aid, US First […]

DAKAR, May 5, 2008 (AFP) – Senegal’s outspoken President Abdoulaye Wade late Sunday called for the scrapping of the UN food agency, saying its inefficiency had largely led to soaring food prices worldwide.Wade said the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), headed by his compatriot Jacques Diouf, was a “waste of money largely spent on doing […]

PARIS, May 4, 2008 (AFP) – Researchers in China have pinpointed an elusive gene that plays a linchpin role in determining the harvest potential of rice, according to a study released on Sunday by the journal Nature Genetics.The productivity of a rice plant is determined by several traits — the number and size of its […]