A Hong Kong sushi restaurant owner paid a record 55.700 US dollars for a massive blue-fin tuna in the first auction of the year at the world's largest fish market in Tokyo, an official and media reports said.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed Monday that 2008 should be the year of the bottom billion, citing the need for renewed determination to address the needs of the poorest of the world's poor who have been left behind by global economic growth.
China's central bank said it will take more steps this year to cool inflation and prevent the world's fastest growing major economy from overheating. A tighter monetary policy will help prevent the economy from overheating and prevent price increases from spreading, the central bank said in a statement last week after concluding a two-day annual work meeting in Beijing.
Record oil prices and continuing high food costs kept Euro zone inflation at 3.1% in December, reported the European Central Bank (ECB).
Two Americans from Kansas City fulfilled their goal of running a marathon in one of the coldest places in the world, Antarctica. The feat was completed last December leaving for Antarctica from Punta Arenas and returning back home on Christmas Day, reports the Kansas press.
World temperatures will cool slightly this year but 2008 will remain among the top 10 hottest years on record (since 1850), predicted British weather experts and the University of East Anglia.
OPEC president Chakib Khelil said on Saturday that the organization is supplying the international market with enough crude but can't be blamed for record prices. But he anticipated oil prices can be expected to keep rising during the first quarter of this year before stabilizing in the following quarter.
Environmental groups have expressed outrage over a decision by the US government to open a huge area off Alaska's northwest coast for oil drilling.
Oil prices hovered on the record 100 US dollars a barrel even after Indonesia OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) governor Maizar Rahman said the cartel has the capability to increase production by 500,000 barrels a day in the coming February meeting. However he warned that oil prices could climb even higher.
China's economy is forecasted to expand two digits for the sixth consecutive year in a context of inflation, which was record in a decade in 2007, reported this week the Shanghai Securities News, quoting a government think-tank.