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Fears of a deepening recession struck Australian stocks Tuesday with the bellwether index down 3.5 per cent.
The ASX 200 gave up 129 points, or 3.5 per cent, to 3,523.
The resources sector was hit hard because of a further fall in commodity prices.
One bright spot was a 17-per-cent lift in the value of Macquarie Bank,...
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Australia's securities regulator Friday joined its counterparts in the United States and Britain in curbing the short-selling of shares that has contributed to the tumult on stock markets.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) ruled that from Monday a temporary ban on what's called naked short-selling would take...
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Australia announced Wednesday it will provide 50 billion rupiah (5.36 million dollars) to help improve food security and reduce malnutrition among children in eastern Indonesia, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said.
The contribution was announced by Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, Bill Farmer, while visiting a clinic...
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Although he rejects the idea that good corporate governance would have decreased the effect of the global financial crisis, Martin Steindl, of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), believes that better corporate governance would have saved some companies from being part of the crisis.
"Such a crisis affects everyone, but...
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While markets in the United States, Europe and Asia were receiving their worst battering in decades last week, Africa's economy, which has been relatively unscathed by the global financial meltdown, came in for some rare praise.
British liberal weekly, the Economist, which once described Africa as "the hopeless continent,"...
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Sharp increases in food and fuel prices will send inflation soaring to 12 per cent this year in sub-Saharan Africa, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.
Food prices have a large impact on inflation in this region, where most countries are dependent on food and fuel imports and are also grappling with pervasive poverty....
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The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Monday appealed for 460 million dollars as a food crisis in Ethiopia and the wider Horn of Africa continued to grow.
"The Horn of Africa region is facing the worst humanitarian crisis since 1984, and Ethiopia is caught in the middle," WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran...
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Nigerian militant group the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said Friday it had released two South Africans hostages.
"The duo were handed over to government secret service officials at 2300 Hrs (Thursday), who will in turn hand them over to representatives of the South African High Commission," MEND...
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Nigerian militant group the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) Wednesday refuted claims that it had released two South Africans it was holding as bargaining chips.
A spokesman for the Nigerian military, Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa, said in a statement Tuesday that that the two South Africans had been released...
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A British citizen has been kidnapped in Nigeria's restive Niger Delta province as a militant group said it would release two South Africans kidnapped among a group of 27 others.
A spokesman for the Nigerian military in the Niger Delta Lieutenant-Colonel Musa Sagir said that the unidentified Briton was kidnapped late on Monday evening,...
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Nigerian militants who have declared an "oil war" Monday said they attacked and destroyed an oil flow station complex owned by Shell in the restive Niger Delta province.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said Sunday it had begun operation "Hurricane Barbarossa" after Nigerian military...
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Britain's role in tackling militants in the restive oil-rich Niger Delta will be limited to training Nigerian forces, Britain's minister for Africa Mark Malloch-Brown said during a visit to Nigeria.
"We want to make sure that the security forces operating in the Niger Delta are properly trained," he said in Abuja after...
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Nigeria is to create a new ministry to oversee the oil-rich Niger Delta, where militant groups have been attacking oil installations and kidnapping expatriate workers, Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua has announced.
Secretary to Government of the Federation, Alhaji Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, said the new ministry, which would have two...
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Cambodia would begin raids on shops suspected of selling pirated movie DVDs and music CDs, a senior official warned Monday.
The South-East Asian nation has become well-known among travellers for its thousands of shops offering dirt-cheap pirated copies of the latest international movies and music, which often hit the stalls before...
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Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua has changed his chief of defence staff and installed new figures at the head of the army, navy and air force.
Air Marshal Paul Dike becomes new Chief of Defence Staff, Major General AB Dambazau took over as the head of the army and Rear Admiral Isaiah Ibrahim became chief of the navy.
Air Marshal...
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Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi on Tuesday blamed rising food prices and Western sanctions targeting the country's ruling elite for the new leap in inflation to over 11 million per cent.
In an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa following the release of the shocking new statistics, Mumbengegwi said Zimbabwe was...
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Technicians from South Africa's state-owned Telkom utility were working Tuesday to restore communications at an international media building after thieves allegedly made off with a piece of copper cable severing phone links to the BBC, Sky News and other media houses.
On Friday, the phones fell silent at the building in Johannesburg,...
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Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe downplayed
the suspension of talks between his party and the opposition on a unity
government, echoing South African President Mbeki in assuring the
negotiations were going 'well.' 'We are still negotiating and
want success... Some areas are debatable but we debate. It is not easy
but I hear...
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Gunmen attacked a houseboat in Rivers State in
the Niger Delta Wednesday killing a naval rating and a civilian crew
member, the army said. Spokesman for special troops deployed
in the region to provide security for oil workers and facilities,
Lieutenant-Colonel Sagir Musa, said about 30 militants attacked the
boat, after which...
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Nigerian militants responsible for crippling
attacks on the West African nation's oil industry said Thursday they
would call off a ceasefire after Britain promised to support the
Nigerian government in ending oil-related violence. The
Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said attacks
would begin again from...
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Somali gunmen have shot and killed a truck
driver for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the fourth
this year, the agency said Wednesday. Ahmed Saalim was part
of a convoy of trucks carrying 602 metric tons of food from Mogadishu
to Bay and Bakool regions, the WFP said. The agency called on all parties to ensure the...
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 Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe during a congress of his ruling
ZANU(PF) party on Thursday became its sole presidential candidate in
elections due next year.
There was no vote or debate among the 10,000 delegates. The
chairmen of each of the party's 10 provincial organizations read out
reports in which they said he had been...
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 The Harare government is determined to reduce inflation and imposed massive price cuts and established a commission to monitor the law’s implementation by businessmen.During the past two days 33 business executives have been arrested for breaching the price controls. “Operation Reduce Prices” scared shop owners and triggered a buying...
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 Nigeria was numb Wednesday after unions across the country called for a major strike in all sectors except the oil industry, where production was no ceased.It seems that Olusegun Obasanjo’s decision to raise the price of gas at pumps during his last week as president of Nigeria triggered a chain reaction that has repercussions even...
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 Intel announced that it would launch its next-generation micro-architecture chips with the Core i7 processor (Nehalem), on November the 17th in San Francisco, at a media and analyst event. Nehalem is also known as “the fastest processor on the planet” and it will feature three different quad-core models: the 2.66 GHz Core i7 920, the...
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 Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., the world’s number one company in the advanced semiconductor technology business, said today it has started the mass production of its 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch multi-level cell-based solid state drives (SSDs) of 128GB capacity.Gerd Schauss, Director Memory Marketing EMEA, Samsung Semiconductor Europe, said the...
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 On Thursday, Apple did a rather surprising thing: it reduced the price of its MacBook Air from $3,098 to $2,598. Yes, your math is accurate, that’s $500. If you have had your eyes on the higher-end Air (1.8GHz with a 64GB solid-state flash drive replacing the traditional ATA hard drive), this may very well be your chance to get one.The...
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 On Monday, Lenovo Group Limited launched its IdeaCentre K210 computer in the US, thus making its debut in offering consumer desktops outside of China. Earlier this year, Lenovo also launched a series of notebooks outside of its home territory, starting with the US as well.One of the more unusual features of the IdeaCentre K210 consists...
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 On Wednesday, at a press conference in Taipei city, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) unveiled the Puma notebook platform, that features the AMD Turion X2 Ultra dual-core ‘Griffin’ mobile processors and ATI Radeon HD 3000 series graphics. According to AMD, the new technology will bring users "the ultimate HD visual performance and...
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 On Tuesday, at the Computex electronics show, Micro-Star International (MSI) launched the Wind mini-desktop PC and the Wind mini-laptop.When comparing the Wind desktop to a traditional PC, the former stands out with two major advantages: size and power consumption. Its dimensions are 300mm by 260mm by 65mm and, for running at full...
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 On Monday, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced the launch of Blu-ray player’s fourth generation, which is expected to be made available for sale sometime this summer, and Blu-ray home theater’s second generation. According to Dongsoo Jun, chief of Digital AV Business Division at Samsung Electronics, the overall Blu-ray market should...
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 On Wednesday, Samsung Electronics America announced the
launch of its new line of desktop monitors, called "Touch Of Color" (TOC).
The new monitors come in the following sizes: 19-inch (T190), 22-inch (T220), 24-inch
(T240) and 26-inch (T260); the response time for the smaller models is of 2ms
and for the larger ones is of...
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 The final specifications and prices of newcomer Asus Eee PC 900 in the UK have been made public, including the operating systems the laptop supports, namely Linux or Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP Home. On Tuesday Asustek Computer Inc. unveiled the new 900 that comes with an 8.9-inch display running at a resolution of 1,024 by 600 pixels,...
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 The format war between HD DVD and
Blu-ray has eventually ended, but who won in fact? Blu-ray won the war, but
what is people’s opinion after all?
First of all, despite the fact
that HD DVD eventually lost the battle, this high def format had its fans. What
happened to these fans? They lost money, of course! Secondly, we have...
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 Although the HD
DVD video format was pronounced dead less than four weeks ago and Blu-ray has
no other rival on the market, Blu-ray players’ prices have started to rise just
like that. In February, the month when HD DVD’s main supporter, Toshiba,
announced that it would no longer produce HD DVD players and recorders, the...
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 On Thursday, Nvidia unveiled the GeForce
9600 GT, the company’s GeForce 9 Series with a midrange graphics card. The
recently unveiled device marks the first time Nvidia has chosen not to launch a
new line of products with the highest-end product first.
Thus, the GeForce 9600 GT will be
serving for the most part of Nvidia’s...
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 Surprisingly or not, the ultimate
8-core desktop platform has just been unveiled. Obviously, it’s Intel that
created such an amazing powerful device!
The world’s largest chip maker
revealed the ultimate desktop platform at the Game Developers Conference (GDC)
in San Francisco.
Formerly codenamed Skulltrail, Intel’s Dual Socket...
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 Gateway Inc. seems to have really
prepared for this year’s winter holiday season, as the company has launched on
Thursday brand new amazing computers that the company hopes to be become hit Christmas
gifts. Gateway’s marketing strategy for 2007’s winter holiday season seems to
target especially the multimedia enthusiastic users; the...
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 Bose has recently launched the SoundDock
Portable, which is a portable system for Apple Inc.’s popular iPod device. The
new device will join the company’s popular award-winning SoundDock system and
it will as well try to match its performances on audio quality. Bose has also
designed a new acoustic package, electronics, as well as a...
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 The popular company VMware has
announced on Monday the details of its upcoming Virtual Infrastructure 3.5. Among
the features the company has announced one could find also the experimental
feature with the help of which the servers will independently shut down if they
are not necessary anymore.
This special feature has...
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 The rumors about three-core
microprocessors have just revealed to be true: Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD,
will be launching a line of three-core microprocessors, hitting the market in
an area where its old rival, Intel, seems not to be currently able to follow
because of its current architecture. But for AMD it seems that dropping...
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 Although a price of about $188
for a laptop seems quite a cheap price, $188 represents almost the double of
the amount of money that the One Laptop Per Child foundation had first said the
devices it wants to produce for the poor children will costs. George Snell, the
spokesman of the One Laptop Per Child foundation, has eventually...
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 While the storage capacities have
started to increase more and more, the sizes of the storage devices have begun
to decrease with the same speed. Recently, Toshiba’s Storage Devise Division
has announced quite a performance in this field; the company has revealed two
new models of hard disk drives that will have very small sizes. The...
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 Although the current high tech
market seems to focus mainly on hit gadgets and all kind of smart devices, some
other small, but fast growing, companies focus on something different. They
have started to offer for corporations and for everybody who is interested in a
new method of saving money. So, while the crazy enthusiastic users...
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 Iomega Corp. represents one of
the world’s leaders in the data protection industry and it seems to become a
top company in network storage too. The company has revealed today a new line
of network hard drives, which will revolutionize the industry. This
announcement comes only weeks after the company has unveiled a new line...
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 At least this is the impression the North American HD DVD Promotional Group wants you to have, after their recent announcement concerning sales for the US territory.According to their press release, HD DVD players now hold 60% of the HD players market, with HD DVD movies reaching an all time high for the month of May, more than 75,000...
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 The Harvard University Library was one of the first to sign Google’s academic book scanning project, but it was also the first to say it won’t take part in the copyright portion in response to Google’s $125 million settlement with authors and publishers. Even so, the library might still take part in the settlement if the terms are more...
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 On Wednesday, T-Mobile USA, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom
AG of Germany,
announced its plans to launch a new phone service it calls T-Mobile@Home later
on this month.
Subscribers will be given the chance to try out the Internet-based
service for a monthly fee of $10. However, in order to gain access to
T-Mobile@Home,...
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 On Tuesday, HBO and Apple officials announced the two companies’ collaboration, which will enable the iTunes Store’s visitors to download HBO television programming, with prices ranging from $1.99 to $2.99 per episode. The offer is set to satisfy even the most demanding of customers, as the list of available shows includes titles such as...
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 Google's Urchin Web analytics server software has finally received that very important upgrade it has been waiting for. Urchin 6, initially announced for late 2004, can now be purchased from authorized resellers for the price of US$2,995 per license for up to 1,000 domains. Users who had already paid for Urchin 5 can redirect the sums...
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 The new “Miss Bimbo” Web site was launched in the UK last month and
it has already attracted numerous children players. It is specially designed
for girls and here they are given a naked virtual character to look after or to
see it as their own reflection. “Bimbo” dollars are the reward for a good-looking
female character, dressed in...
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 Researchers from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business released on Monday a study which shows that the eBay bidders have saved over 7 billion dollars only in 2003 through the auction site, proving that the site is actually helping consumers spend less for more.Wolfgang Jank and Galit Shmueli are the two...
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 Enough with Apple Inc.’s monopoly
on the online music selling market! iTunes has got itself a major rival:
Amazon.com’s own online music store!
Amazon.com has announced the
opening of its own online music store on Tuesday, in a move that represents
quite a shock for both the online music buyers and Apple Inc., probably....
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 Former long time partners NBC
Universal and Apple have started for some time a public war that makes
everybody curious about what will happen next. However, the most recent hit
that has reminded us of the two battling companies has taken place on Thursday,
when some source from “The New York Times” has
happened to speak about NBC...
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 Spectacular information coming under the form of an Apple internal e-mail was posted on the popular electronics blog Engadget, causing a rapid and massive hysteria among investors.The information that Apple’s craved iPhone and the next-gen OS Leopard will be delayed for several months was published by Engadget on Wednesday morning and...
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 On Monday, the Sotheby auction of Impressionist and modern art didn’t impress so much. Or was it all about the financial crisis? Nevertheless, the organizers of the auction were very disappointed about its not so successful sale. Still, it managed to raise nearly $60 million and set new records for Degas and Munch, but the expectations...
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 Guitar Hero World Tour is one of the most important games of Activision Blizzard Inc. for this year. When the video game hit stores on Sunday, it quickly became a test for the game industry to endure the economic crisis. Guitar Hero will be sold at a price of $189.99 and is one of the most expensive games released by the Santa Monica...
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 A 1975 set of three self-portraits by
Francis Bacon, entitled “Three Studies for Self-Portrait,” fetched 17.3 million
pounds ($34.5 million) at Christie’s International sale of contemporary art.
Four bidders competed for Francis Bacon’s
paintings which fetched the highest price at auction for any of the US artist’s
works. Bacon...
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 A Claude Monet painting, entitled “Le Pont du chemin de fer
a Argenteuil,”
was sold Tuesday for more than $41 million, breaking the auction record for the
French Impressionist artist. The buyer wanted to remain anonymous, Christie’s
said.
The painting shows a bridge with two trains passing over a Seine full of pleasure boats. It...
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 A new box office record was registered by the Motion Picture
Association of America, Wednesday. Even though the movie attendance was not different
than the ones over the past three years, film costs reached a high record. Year
2007 was the best year ever for Hollywood,
only because movie tickets prices were risen.
This is how,...
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In a continuing signal of economic decline, US consumer prices fell 1 per cent month-on- month in October, the largest one-month decrease since inflation prices started being published in 1947, the US government said Wednesday.
The overall inflation index had remained flat through September after having its first decline in two years...
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The International Monetary Fund drastically cut its global economic forecasts on Thursday in the face of a growing credit crisis, predicting a recession in the United States and the world in 2009.
In an update of its World Economic Outlook from October, the IMF said global growth would slow to 2.2 per cent in 2009, down from the...
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The world's largest publicly traded oil company, Exxon Mobil, reported the largest quarterly profit in US history Thursday on the back of record oil prices.
Exxon earned 14.83 billion dollars in the quarter, an increase of 60 per cent on the same quarter of 2007.
Sales increased by 35 per cent to 137.74 billion dollars in the same...
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US consumer confidence plummeted to a new low in October and housing prices plunged by the most on record this year as a financial meltdown appeared more and more likely to plunge the world's largest economy into recession.
The slew of depressing economic news will likely prompt the US Federal Reserve to further cut interest rates at...
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US presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain campaigned across Pennsylvania on Tuesday and continued battling for the public's confidence to nurse a sagging US economy back to health.
McCain vowed he would "fool the pundits" and capture Pennsylvania in next week's general election, as polls showed the Republican...
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The world is witnessing a nuclear power renaissance at a time when demands for fossil fuel-based energy and its prices have increased, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Monday.
But the expected increase in civilian nuclear power plants is accompanied by the risk of mounting nuclear material being converted into...
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Inflation remained unchanged in the United States last month on a downturn in energy costs, the US Labour Department said Thursday.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the consumer price index remained "virtually unchanged" in September from the previous month after falling 0.1 per cent in August. Prices increased 4.9 per cent...
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Inflation remained unchanged in the United States last month on a downturn in energy costs, the US Labour Department said Thursday.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the consumer price index remained "virtually unchanged" in September from the previous month after seeing its first decrease in two years in August with a fall of...
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New York state's attorney general has threatened legal action against financially troubled insurer AIG unless it takes steps to "review, rescind and recover all past unreasonable expenditures."
The move comes as US authorities are starting to investigate the behaviour of multiple financial companies in the wake of the...
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The US Federal Reserve announced Wednesday a 50 basis points cut in its federal funds rate, to 1.5 per cent, in a move coming simultaneously with rate cuts by leading banks in Europe.
The move comes in a bid to ease monetary conditions in the face of the severe financial industry crisis which has hurt the banking sector's...
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With a worried eye on plunging stock values a day after lawmakers rejected his financial rescue plan, US President George W Bush Tuesday again insisted that the US Congress act and warned of "urgent" consequences if it doesn't.
On Monday, the House of Representatives rebuffed a 700-billion- dollar life raft for Wall Street...
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Nordic bourses dipped Tuesday, the day after US investment banker Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, triggering a global decline on stock markets.
In Oslo, the OSEBX index was down 3 per cent in mid-morning trading, shares in oil companies decling as crude prices dropped.
The Stockholm bourse index was down roughly 1...
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The United States economy grew at 3.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2008, the government said Thursday in revised figures that showed strong international trade had helped stave off a feared recession.
The gross domestic product (GDP) figure was revised upward from an earlier estimate of 1.9 per cent for the quarter, the Bureau of...
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Anyone who expected Hillary Clinton to bow gracefully from the scene or be a sore loser may want to think twice after the heartfelt endorsement she delivered for her onetime rival Barack Obama for US president.
The former first lady, 60, made a grand, triumphant entry into the Pepsi Center convention hall Tuesday evening, creating a...
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US consumer prices in July were 5.6 per cent higher year-on-year, the highest inflation rate in 17 years, the Department of Labor reported Thursday.
The cost of living index jumped 0.8 per cent from June to July, higher than forecasts, amid rising energy and food costs.
But core prices, which do not include food and energy, also...
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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama
called on the United States to end its dependence on oil from the
Middle East and Venezuela within 10 years as part of a broad speech
laying out his energy plans on Monday. Obama, who celebrated
his 47th birthday Monday, said he would direct the 'full resources' of
government towards...
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Barack Obama's celebrated overseas trip has
left the Democratic presidential candidate open to accusations of
taking victory for granted, and of wowing international audiences when
he should be focussing on the problems of ordinary US voters.
His Republican rival John McCain this week turned to mocking Obama's
celebrity treatment...
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Barack Obama's celebrated overseas trip has
left the Democratic presidential candidate open to accusations of
taking victory for granted, and of wowing international audiences when
he should be focussing on the problems of ordinary US voters.
His Republican rival John McCain this week turned to mocking Obama's
celebrity treatment...
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Home from a week-long trip to Europe and the
Middle East, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama turned his
attention back to the struggling US economy and met Monday with a
collection of top economic officials. Republican rival John
McCain spoke of his own plans to combat surging energy prices at a
townhall meeting...
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President Daniel Ortega accused the European Union of interfering in Nicaragua's domestic politics and supporting the opposition against him.
He called on his supporters Thursday night at a rally in Juigalpa in
central Nicaragua to defend his government 'against the great capital'
and accused the European Union and the United...
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 According to a survey released this week, one out of five Massachusetts inhabitants aged 25 to 39 intend to leave the state during the next five years. Among the individuals who plan to depart from the northeastern US state, 32 percent said that the Massachusetts's high cost of living is the reason of them wanting to leave. Record-high...
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