Category: Other

SINGAPORE, Oct 16, 2006 (AFP) – Asia is now the driving force behind demand for mobile music services which will make up for lost revenue by telecom firms in their voice-only services, a US recording label Warner Music said Monday.South Korea and Japan dominate the mobile music market and Asia Pacific holds the largest market […]

NEW DELHI, Oct 15, 2006 (AFP) – It was the slogan that propelled India’s then premier Indira Gandhi to her first re-election victory in 1971 by a landslide. Thirty-five years on, the Congress Party government has brought back “Garibi Hatao” — “Eradicate Poverty”. The government, elected in 2004 on an anti-poverty programme, is hoping the […]

HARARE, Oct 15, 2006 (AFP) – Zimbabwe, shunned by the West, is trawling ever wider for alternative business partners, but analysts say much-trumpeted deals with its new friends are unlikely to yield meaningful benefits to the country.The state-run Zimbabwe Central Bank summoned reporters to a press conference last week to attend the signing of a […]

CANNES, France, Oct 15, 2006 (AFP) – True love is making a comeback on the television screen, winning the hearts of audiences around the globe.It’s also making big bucks for some of the world’s leading programme makers, contradicting playwright William Shakespeare’s famous observation that “the course of true love never did run smooth”. The staple […]

LOS ANGELES, Oct 14, 2006 (AFP) – For centuries regarded as a sparkling symbol of decadence sipped by kings and queens, Champagne has today become the tipple of choice for hip-hop royalty.But while rap stars have kept the bubbly flowing from magnums, Methuselahs and jereboams in fashionable nightclubs from New York to Los Angeles, not […]

DHAKA, Oct 14, 2006 (AFP) – A tiny Grameen bank loan to buy a cow was a lifeline for 32-year-old Margina who now runs a successful rice business but was once so poor she could not afford to eat.Like millions of others, Margina saw her life transformed through a 3,000 taka (42 dollar) loan from […]

OSLO, Oct 13, 2006 (AFP) – The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh and the Grameen Bank which offers loans to poor people without any financial security. “Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Micro-credit is one such […]

BANGALORE, India, Oct 13, 2006 (AFP) – India’s biggest low-cost airline, Air Deccan, said Friday it has raised 4.5 billion rupees (100 million dollars) from two foreign banks to tide it over a financial crisis.G.R. Gopinath, Managing Director of Air Deccan, said the deal with British-based Banks Investec Bank and Germany’s Billon and HSH Nord […]

DHAKA, Oct 13, 2006 (AFP) – Nearly three decades after Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus launched the pioneering Grameen Bank, giving small loans to the poor, microcredit is hailed for helping more than five million Bangladeshis. Grameen began life in 1976 as a pilot project run by Yunus, a professor of rural economics at Chittagong […]

CANNES, France, Oct 13, 2006 (AFP) – After years of eager anticipation and a lot of talk, the multi-media age has finally dawned and a string of breakthrough deals at this week’s largest ever MIPCOM audiovisual trade show will send it on its way around the world.That was the message from the entire line-up of […]

PARIS, Oct 13, 2006 (AFP) – Microcredit has become an increasingly powerful tool to liberate the world’s poorest people, particularly women, from the prison of poverty and the power of loan sharks. It provides access to small loans to the world’s 1.2 billion poor people so they can rebuild their homes, pay school fees or […]

SINGAPORE, Oct 12, 2006 (AFP) – The Singapore government will issue a 20-year bond for the first time next year as part of efforts to further develop the local debt market, the de facto central bank said Thursday.The new Singapore Government Securities (SGS) bond will be issued in March 2007, the Monetary Authority of Singapore […]