Continuing worries about the stability of the global economy and the rally seen in equity markets continued to spark investment in gold on Tuesday with the price breaking through the symbolic 1,000 US dollars mark and touching a new high for 2009.
United States not only increased its arms sales by nearly 50% last year but its share of world weapons sales also rose to more than two-thirds despite the global economic downturn, a newspaper reported Monday.
By Fernando Henrique Cardoso (*)
The war on drugs has failed and should make way for a global shift towards de-criminalising cannabis use and promoting harm reduction, says the former president of Brazil, writing in Sundays’ edition of The Observer. Fernando Henrique Cardoso argues that the hard-line approach has brought disastrous consequences for Latin America, which has been the frontline in the war on drug cultivation for decades, while failing to change the continent's position as the largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana.
Policy action to combat the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression is working, but governments should not relax stimulus measures until recovery takes hold and unemployment levels recede, the head of the International Monetary Fund says.
Central bankers have backed new measures to strengthen supervision of the global banking industry. A meeting of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which consists of the world's central banks, pledged to increase bank's capital requirements.
The military cooperation agreement to be signed Monday by Brazilian president Lula da Silva and his French counterpart, Nicholas Sarkozy will make Brazil the “leading naval power” in Latinamerica according to the O Estado de Sao Paulo.
Iran and Venezuela plan to stand up against imperialist foes by strengthening bilateral cooperation on a range of issues, including nuclear power, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said over the weekend.
World Trade Organization (WTO) has given its long-awaited ruling on the biggest trade dispute in its history. The decision, which is officially confidential, is over whether the European Union gave illegal subsidies to plane-maker Airbus as the US argues.
United Kingdom Chancellor Alistair Darling is set to unveil plans within the next few months to halve the Government's spending deficit over four years, his deputy at the Treasury said.
Profits of the top 500 Chinese corporations in 2008 exceeded that of their United States counterparts. Gains for the full year in 2008 totalled 1.21 trillion Yuan (177.17 billion US dollars), much more than the 98.9 billion USD from the top 500 US firms in the same period.