Category: News

Finance ministers from leading developed and emerging economies also said they would keep economic policy support in place in the face of “uneven” recovery.

“We are not out of the woods yet and we need to maintain the measures we have taken,” said Alistair Darling, finance minister of host country Britain after the meeting in St Andrews.

Friday’s Labor Department report, seen as one of the best indicators of economic momentum, showed job losses narrowed last month to 190,000.

The improvement was not enough however to prevent the jobless rate from surging to the first double-digit level for more than 26 years, from 9.8 percent in September.

But the UN said it had no intention of abandoning Afghanistan, where 100,000 US-led foreign troops are battling a bloody insurgency eight years after the extremist Taliban regime was driven from power.

About 600 expatriate staff, from a total of 1,100 foreigners, will be temporarily relocated either within Afghanistan or abroad, UN spokesman Dan McNorton told AFP.

Three days after quitting a scheduled run-off, Abdullah Abdullah said the subsequent decision by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to hand Karzai another five years in power had no basis in law and underlined its bias.

“This (IEC) decision does not have a legal basis,” the former foreign minister told reporters, albeit refraining from calling on his supporters to take to the streets in protest.

Fresh from a White House meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also made a heart-felt plea for a climate protocol in a speech to US lawmakers, Obama held talks with European Union leaders to assure them his administration supported a new treaty at next month’s summit in Copenhagen.

At a EU-US summit here, which continues Wednesday with talks with US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Europeans pressed Washington to take action on climate change ahead of December’s climate summit, warning that not enough had been done.

Karadzic called the proceedings “bad from the start” after he entered the accused dock of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for a hearing on how to move forward in the face of his trial boycott.

He faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the 1992-95 Bosnia war.

Two-and-a-half months after Afghans went to the polls to elect a president for the second time, Abdullah’s move appeared to guarantee President Hamid Karzai a second term but flung his legitimacy into doubt.

After Karzai snubbed a series of demands promoted by his rival as a chance to avoid a repeat of massive first-round fraud, Abdullah said he saw no point in standing, but stopped short of calling for a boycott.

Two-and-a-half months after Afghans went to the polls to elect a president for the second time in history, Abdullah’s move appeared to guarantee President Hamid Karzai a second term in office but flung his legitimacy into doubt.

After Karzai snubbed a series of demands promoted by his rival as a chance to avoid a repeat of massive first-round fraud, Abdullah said he saw no point in standing, but stopped short of calling for a boycott.

Officials in Abdullah’s campaign team said the former foreign minister would announce he was pulling out of the November 7 contest on Sunday in the absence of any U-turn by Karzai on measures to combat fraud.

“If by the end of today we do not receive a positive response to our conditions from the government, then Dr. Abdullah himself will announce his reaction to it tomorrow,” Sayed Aqa Fazel Sancharaki, a spokesman for Abdullah’s campaign, told AFP.

At the heart of their story is the bizarre fact that there are more fine fish swimming in the tiny tanks than there are in the surrounding sea.

Having overfished and polluted its own waters to the point where they are home mainly to great ghosts of the past, Hong Kong now imports up to 90 percent of its seafood.

As the international community said a deadly Taliban attack on a UN hostel in Kabul would not disrupt the November 7 run-off, the Islamist militia said they had drawn up a battle plan designed to torpedo the process.

Organisers of the election meanwhile said they had agreed to a demand from President Hamid Karzai’s challenger, ex-foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, for 20,000 of his observers to be accredited to help prevent vote-rigging.