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The first meeting of the Bangladesh-Pakistan Joint Business Council expectedly to kick-off in Dhaka next week would give priority to issues relating to signing of a free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries, sources said.
   ‘Signing of a free trade deal would top the agenda of the meeting to be held on August 27. Both the governments concerned have agreed to ink the deal by September,’ Mir Nasir Hossain, president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, told BDNEWS.
   Earlier, during the visit of prime minister, Khaleda Zia to Pakistan in February this year, the governments of the both the countries had agreed to have a bilateral FTA before September 30 this year.
   Mir Nasir Hossain said the council would discuss about selection of commodities that would come under the trade pact. We would also talk about elimination of existing non-tariff barriers (NTBs) between the two countries, he said.
   Referring to raising of trade target to $1b between the two countries, he said trade between the two countries was being hampered due to absence of direct shipping line between Chittagong and Karachi.
   Now a lone ship goes to Karachi from Chittagong via Singapore, he said adding the exporters almost failed to cash the benefit of duty free access for jute products to Pakistan due to this difficulty.
   Exchange of trade delegations between specific sectors, industrial cooperation and identification of potential sectors for establishing joint ventures would also come up for discussion, sources said.
   Proposal for formation of a Pakistan-Bangladesh dispute settlement committee to resolve commercial disputes may be discussed in the meeting, sources added.
   Chaudhury Muhammad Saeed, President of the Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry would lead the delegation from Pakistan.
   Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan and Alamgir Bashar Khan, High Commissioner of Pakistan, were expected to be present at the inaugural session.
   Currently, Bangladesh exports raw jute and jute products, chemical fertiliser, tea, cut flower and foliage, tobacco, pharmaceuticals to Pakistan while imports textile and textile articles, machinery and mechanical appliances etc from Pakistan.
   According to FBCCI, Pakistan enjoyed $ 62.11 million trade surplus during the July-March period of the previous fiscal.

India’s southern state of Karnataka has filed a case against US soft drinks giant Coca-Cola, accusing it of selling products with unacceptably high pesticide levels, a minister said Saturday.
   The case was filed August 12 after state health department-supervised laboratory tests showed excessive amounts of pesticide in Coca-Cola product samples, Karnataka health minister R Ashok said.
   ‘The government will not hesitate to initiate action, be it against a multinational company or an Indian firm,’ Ashok told reporters in Bangalore, India’s high-tech hub.
   According to legal documents, the tests found that the Coke products contained a pesticide called malathion beyond permissible limits.
   Exposure to high amounts of malathion can cause difficulties with breathing, chest tightness, vomiting, cramps, diarrhoea and other symptoms, doctors say.
   ‘We filed a case under the provisions of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act,’ Ashok said. The law provides for prison sentences of up to five years for anybody responsible for violating the act.
   The report prompted southern Kerala state to ban Coke and Pepsi drinks while five other states, including Karnataka, barred them from schools and government offices.
   Meanwhile US soft drinks giant Coca-Cola Friday filed a petition in court against a ban on its products by an Indian state due to allegedly high toxic levels, the company said.
   ‘Given the company’s strong belief that there is no legal basis for the ban and it is unfair, arbitrary and unwarranted, Coca-Cola believes that it has no option but to challenge the order,’ it said in a statement.
   The cola majors have repeatedly denied the claims.
   ‘Independent tests at accredited laboratories in and outside India have clearly shown that our products are absolutely safe, and there is no basis for this ban,’ the Coca-Cola statement said.
   ‘We have shared the results of these tests with the Kerala government, but they have not withdrawn the ban.’
   The case is due to be heard in the Kerala High Court on Monday. India’s Supreme Court last week gave Coca-Cola India and PepsiCo India one month to reveal the ingredients of their soft drinks. Coke and Pepsi account for nearly four-fifths of India’s two billion-dollar-a-year soft drinks market.
   Both Indian and US business leaders have warned that the controversy could tarnish India’s investment image abroad.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have unjustly intervened in Bangladesh’s political framework and national policy making process through incorporating unfair conditions in the name of funding development projects, campaigners of economic justice have alleged.
   At a joint press conference in Dhaka Saturday, the leaders leaders of Alliances for Economic Justice, Bangladesh and Orthonoitik Nyaybichar Sanghati Parishad said the global lenders, in the name of providing fund for projects, frequently imposed harsh conditions, which lessened the country’s economic policy sovereignty and protected the interests of multi-national companies.
   The alliance and the sanghati parishad chalked out elaborate awareness and protest programmes at home and abroad marking the 50th annual conference of WB and IMF in Singapore.
   The programmes include seminars at National Press Club on September 4, 5 and 9, mass rally at the Central Shaheed Minar on September 16 and rallies in Singapore and Indonesia.
   Campaign for Good Governance executive Aminur Rashid Babul, and alliance and sanghati parishad leaders Ahmed Swapon and Shamima Nasrin attended the press conference.

Demonstrations erupted in Nepal’s capital on Saturday after the government hiked fuel prices by as much as 25 per cent in a bid to save state-owned Nepal Oil Corp (NOC) from bankruptcy.
   Protesters in Kathmandu burnt tyres, blocked traffic and shouted slogans demanding the government scrap the price rises. Just east of the capital truck drivers parked their vehicles in the middle of a road and blocked it.
   The government raised the price of petrol, diesel, kerosene and cooking gas late Friday to offset the impact of soaring global oil prices on the NOC. ‘We had to take the harsh decision to save the NOC from going bankrupt,’ commerce and industry minister Hridayesh Tripathi told AFP.
   ‘The NOC has been suffering losses of 830 million rupees ($11.17m) a month due to international petroleum product prices,’ Tripathi said. ‘Even with the increases, it will still face losses of around $2.9 million a month.’
   ‘The price hike was necessary as there was a danger NOC might not be able to continue oil supplies unless it cleared its dues,’ he said. The government hiked petrol prices by 25 per cent a litre to 84.28 rupees (1.13 dollars). Kerosene was raised by 23 per cent a litre, diesel by 11 per cent and cooking gas by 11 per cent per cylinder.

Speakers said at a workshop that development of livestock and poultry could greatly contribute to the poverty reduction as the two sectors give livelihood to about 3.25 crore people or one fourth of the country’s total population.
   They stressed public-private partnership in technical supports like vaccination, drugs, feeds and health services for livestock and poultry animals for the overall growth of the two sectors.
   BRAC Advocacy Unit organised the workshop at a city hotel on Saturday with its director, Afsan Chowdhury, in the chair. Former cabinet secretary and now adviser to the BRAC’s unit, Sa’dat Hussain, was the chief guest while the NGO’s senior regional manager, Sagorika Indu, presented a keynote paper.
   Livestock has been identified as a thirst sector and it needs supports for sustainable development, said Sa’dat Hussain. Poverty alleviation is a global agendum, which needs collective efforts from external development partners, the government and the private sector, he added.
   Referring to the BRAC’s special poverty alleviation programme for the hardcore poor, the NGO executives said since the start of the programme in 2002, it expects to cover 70,000 poor families of 15 north-eastern districts by the end of 2006.
   According to a baseline survey conducted by the BRAC, ultra poor people, who have little or no access to land and whose daily calorie intake is too meagre to lead a healthy life, have very limited access to microcredit facilities.
   In most of the cases, the poverty alleviation programme for the ultra poor people become unsuccessful due to problems related to identification of really needy persons. BRAC has included people of four categories—beggars, maid servants, day labourers and disabled—in its drive. The country needs Tk 3,000 crore annually to reach the programme to all the hardcore poor people, the seminar was told.

An Irish company has thrown down the gauntlet to the worldwide scientific community to test a technology it has developed that it claims produces free energy.
   The company, Steorn, says its discovery is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy—a concept that challenges one of the basic rules of physics.
   It claims the technology can be used to supply energy for virtually all devices, from mobile phones to cars.
   Steorn issued its challenge through an advertisement in the Economist magazine this week quoting Ireland’s Nobel prize-winning author George Bernard Shaw who said that ‘all great truths begin as blasphemies’.
   Sean McCarthy, Steorn’s chief executive officer, said they had issued the challenge for 12 physicists to rigorously test the technology so it can be developed.
   ‘What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy,’ McCarthy said. ‘The energy isn’t being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. Once the technology operates it provides a constant stream of clean energy.’

Poor prices of farm produces and widespread political-administrative corruption are among the factors that hinder the socio-economic improvement of the rural poor, cross section people told a regional seminar in Comilla Friday.
   The Bangladesh Young Economists Association, in association with the Bangladesh Economic Association and the Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad, organised the seminar titled ‘Shaping the Future of Bangladesh’ to draw views of local people on development issues.
   People of various professions frankly spoke on various issues ranging from corruption to election at the seminar held at the premises of C Ali High School at Amratali Bazar of Barura upazila. The audience was a mix of people of all walks—from a farmer to a teacher.
   Presided over by AZM Saleh, president of BYEA, the seminar was attended by BEA president Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, Pubali Bank managing director Khondker Ibrahim Khaled, Haq’s Bay managing director Abdul Haq and former comptroller general and auditor general Syed Yousuf Hossain.
   ‘We do not get just prices of our produces,’ said Mubarak Hossain, a farmer of Amratali union.
   He said farmers now produce much more than ever before, but get much less in return. Poor prices of farm produces hardly help him improve living standard of his family, Mobarrak said.
   Abdul Motaleb, who owns a dairy farm, said he does not get fair prices of the milk produced in his dairy.
   Selina Aktar, a primary school headmistress, said teachers are transferred under political influence or in exchange of bribes.
   Habibur Rahman had to give Tk 50 as bribe for an injection at the government health complex.
   Kashem Saifullah, an unemployed youth, said corrupt political leaders, who spend black money in the election, can not do any good to the rural people.
   Tajul Islam, a field-level insurance official, said when he applied for a loan from the local branch of a state-owned bank, official concerned wanted 10 per cent of the total loan amount as bribe.
   Khondker Ibrahim Khaled said middlemen reap the benefits of the increased production of the agricultural produces.
   An organbised syndicate raises the price of the farm products at the consumers’ level and offer lower price at producers’ level, said the former deputy governor of central bank.
   He said rural people should be united against the syndicate to protect their rights to get benefit from increased yields.
   Abdul Haq said the sustainable development of the country is not possible without materialisation of hopes and desires of the grass-roots people.
   Economist Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, who also chairs development research organisation BUP, said without quality education no nation can prosper.
   He said the country needs a long-term plan to remove the existing problems impeding sustainable development.
   Deprived people have to be united to protect their rights, he said. ‘Without punishing corrupts, the people’s rights can not be protected.’
   AZM Saleh said the BYEA organised the meetings to cross-check the problems and opinions of the rural people on the issues related to the future development of the country.
   The association will organise such seminar in Habiganj on September 2, he said. The BYEA organised seminars at Birampur in Dinajpur on July 7 as part of its initiatives to get feedback from rural people on development issues.
   General secretary of the association Badrul Munir also spoke at the function.

Board of Investment has requested the Bangladesh Bank governor to form an arbitration committee for solving the lingering problems of the sick industries.
   In a letter to the central bank chief recently, the investment promotion agency’s executive chairman, Mahmudur Rahman, said the problems of sick industries have been existing for a long time, as there is no particular act for the issue.
   He also said in the letter that both the ‘Industry Policy’ and the ‘BOI Act’ have stressed the need for rehabilitation of sick industries for advancing the country’s industrialization.
   BoI sources told BSS that Bangladesh Sick Industries Association had urged the board to take necessary steps to relieve sick units of the filings of ‘Ortho Rin Adalat Act- 2003’ and ‘Bankruptcy Act,’ and not to brand them as ‘loan defaulters’ since they were officially declared ailing.
   The association also wanted their entire outstanding loans with interests should be written off as per recommendations made by the government’s ‘Sick Industries Rehabilitation Cell’.
   The association president, Chowdhury Muhammad Ishaque, told BSS that the commercial banks were filing cases against the sick industries despite an official bar as the government itself has identified them as sick units.
   In 1991, Ishaque said, the government first declared 1,580 industries as sick and formed the Sick Industries Rehabilitation Cell through an inter-ministerial committee. The government has so far declared a total of 3,499 industries as sick till date, he said.
   He also said that this cell later decided not to count the sick industries as loan defaulters and write off their principal and outstanding credits on the basis of industry policy-86.
   He also demanded effective step of the government to form ‘Bangladeshi Sick Industries Act’ and ‘Bangladesh Sick Industries Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Board’ for rehabilitation of the country’s sick industries.

China hopes to start transit trade with Pakistan and two Central Asian States next year.
   Official sources told APP in Beijing here Friday that a general framework agreement has already arrived at between China, Pakistan, Kyrgizstan and Kazakhstan. They made considerable progress to sort out some relevant legal and administrative matters, at the experts-level meeting held in Islamabad recently.
   The meeting mainly discussed volume of transit trade, number and valid term of visa from 2006 to 2007, and problems existing in the process of implementing inspection, quarantine and customs rules.
   Four countries agreed that Pakistan would draft a proposal to set up a promotion institution for joint transportation for the next meeting. The proposal will focus on expanding trade exchanges through Karakuram Highway.
   The four-country Transit Trade Agreement among China, Pakistan, Kyrgizstan and Kazakhstan was signed in 1995 and started to function in 2004 owing to various reasons.
   According to the agreement, the four countries would issue some licenses to transit trade and grant visas with certain period of validity to transit traders. In order to make transit transportation more convenient, the four countries will jointly draw up a unified procedure for Customs Clearance.
   The Agreement will remain in force for five years and will be assessed sometimes.
   Li Yanwu, an official with the highway management department of the Chinese Ministry of Communication, said China, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were neighbours and it had been a common pursuit of the four countries to seek regional development through cooperation. -Communication and transportation play a very important role in seeking development through cooperation, Li noted. The four countries first reached an agreement on transit transportation in 1995.
   Meanwhile Pakistan, China are scheduled to hold fourth round of negotiation on Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in Beijing next month.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc is fighting battles on multiple fronts after posting its first quarterly profit decline in 10 years, and analysts question whether the world’s largest retailer can regain the feverish growth rates of its past.
   Wal-Mart’s woes range from high energy prices, which hit its lower-income customer base and its own costs, to setbacks in its international strategy, to public relations stumbles like this week’s sudden resignation of civil rights icon Andrew Young as its public ambassador.
   Young quit as head of a pro-Wal-Mart advocacy group after he was quoted in the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper as saying inner-city stores that overcharged black customers were run by ‘Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.’ Wal-Mart, which has made repeated public commitments this year to diversity, said Young’s comments did not reflect its views.
   On the plus side, analysts say, Wal-Mart has ambitious programmes to stock trendier products, remodel most of its more than 2,000 Super centre stores and tighten its grip on the costs of inventory, labour and energy.
   Combined with an ongoing public relations offensive to counter critics who claim its pay and benefits are skimpy, Wal-Mart is juggling a lot of balls at once and analysts say the outcome is still up in the air.
   ‘I think they’re in so much transition right now that it’s hard to measure whether or not they’re making progress,’ said Patricia Edwards, portfolio manager and retail analyst at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich in Seattle, which manages $8.2 billion in assets and holds 51,000 Wal-Mart shares. ‘It is a lot to handle.’
   George Whalen of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, Calif., said Wal-Mart has a track record of handling multiple tasks: ‘When you get to be the biggest in the world, you fight battles on every front sometimes.’
   Second-quarter results showed the first profit decline in a decade on the cost of selling its loss-making business in Germany. It quit another loss-maker, South Korea, in May but still operates in 13 countries in Asia, Latin America and Britain and intends to keep expanding, especially in China.
   But the quarter’s sales and profit growth also slowed at Wal-Mart’s US stores, its biggest division, as high fuel prices kept customers away, cut their spending power and drove up Wal-Mart’s own costs for a fleet of 7,000 trucks.
   Some analysts question whether Wal-Mart can regain growth rates that made it a darling of Wall Street in the 1990s.
   After precipitous gains in the 1980s and 1990s, the stock peaked at around $70 in January 2000 before losing steam to linger mainly in the $50-$60 range. It has lost another 3 per cent this year to current levels around $45.
   Wal-Mart’s earnings per share rose more than 16 per cent per year on average over the past 10 years and sales grew by annual rates between 12 per cent and 20 per cent.

The Southern African Development Community closed its two-day summit here on Friday, with leaders of the 14 member countries reaffirming their commitment to the regional integration agenda.
   According to a communique issued at a post-summit press conference, the summit emphasised the need to scale up the implementation of the SADC integration agenda.
   Pakalitha Mosisili, Lesotho prime minister and new chairman of SADC, said that to meet the regional integration goals requires enhanced and sustained political will and commitment.
   To this end, the summit established a Task Force comprising ministers responsible for finance, investment, economic development, trade and industry, to work with the secretariat with a view to defining the roadmap for eradicating poverty and propose measures for fast tracking implementation.
   The summit approved and signed the SADC protocol on finance and investment, which is critical for harmonizing macroeconomic policies in boosting integration.
   The summit noted that while SADC recorded an overall 5 per cent growth in real GDP in 2005, the region still needs to work hard to attain in the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
   The leaders observed that programs for combating the spread of HIV and mitigating the impact of AIDS remain very high on the region’s agenda, and resolved that these interventions be up- scaled within the context of the Maseru Declaration on Combating HIV/AIDS of 2004.

As increasingly harried consumers grapple with overwhelming fashion choices, inconsistent sizes and expanding waistlines, Web-based companies are casting themselves as personal shoppers, catering to every body type’s special needs.
   While shopping for clothes and shoes online is not new, representing nearly $14 billion in annual sales, the more sophisticated sizing metrics offered by the latest wave of Internet apparel companies and Web sites is a selling point that may lure the busy, fed-up or hard-to-fit shopper.
   Marketing executive Cathy Kim, 33, considers herself a reasonably easy-to-fit Size 4 who likes to shop. Still, taking up space in her closet is what she calls ‘useless material,’ vestiges of past online shopping forays gone awry.
   ‘I’m definitely one of those people that finds myself returning things,’ said the Los Angeles resident. ‘That’s the one thing about shopping online which is so annoying. It’s hard to see how something on a model is going to look on you.’
   Enter an emerging niche of companies attempting to take the guesswork out of sizing. While Landsends.com, among the first to offer custom clothing online, allows shoppers to choose the type of wash for jeans and khakis, as well as details like rise and leg shape, and J.C. Penney and J. Crew offer on-line fit guides for bras and swimsuits, new Web sites MyShape.com and Zafu.com are taking sizing precision one step further.
   ‘They’re tapping into the core value of the Internet— helping consumers find products that are most relevant to them,’ said Forrester Research analyst Tamara Mendelsohn, who anticipates the launch of even more size-aware Web sites.

The Asian Development Bank has agreed to provide $1 billion US for Pakistan’s National Trade Corridor project that would link Karachi to Gwadar and Khunjrab in Northern Areas, local newspaper Dawn reported Saturday.
   The World Bank and other lenders have already agreed to provide 1.8 billion dollars for the Karachi-Gwadar-Khunjrab section, which is estimated to cost 2.8 billion dollars.
   The overall cost of the NTC program is estimated at 6 billion dollars. The program envisages improving all sectors of communications, including ports, shipping, aviation, etc.
   ADB’s team leader for NTC investment program Sean O. Sullivan discussed the project with adviser to prime minister on finance Salman Shah and authorities of the National Highway Authority. Shah said the highway would be made commercially viable by encouraging commercial and industrial activities and the revenue generated by these activities would contribute to the cost of the NTC project.

Etihad Airways has announced the introduction of e-ticketing, the electronic document that will replace conventional paper tickets, for Guests booking travel with the UAE’s national airline.
   Etihad has implemented the e-ticketing system following a successful fast-track project undertaken over the last four months, which has gained praise from the International Air Transport Association and system providers, Amadeus.
   ‘E-ticketing will enable Etihad to enhance the relationship with our Guests by simplifying the way they organise and book their travel, ‘ said Peter Baumgartner, head of marketing, Etihad Airways. ‘Guests will be able to obtain their e-ticket using minimal time and effort, regardless of how they are booking their travel.
   The introduction of the new system has also ensured that Etihad will comfortably meet the IATA’s deadline for all airlines to use e-ticketing only, which is scheduled for the end of 2007.
   In order to ensure the new system would operate as planned, Etihad recently conducted trials with employees on selected international routes. The success of the trials meant that the Abu Dhabi-based
   airline, could proceed with the implementation with total confidence
   There are many benefits to Etihad’s Guests with the new e-ticketing system especially in terms of security of the document and information contained within it.
   Greater convenience is provided too, enabling Guests to now be able to amend their flight details up to 30 minutes before minimum check-in times. Ticket changes can now be made over the phone, removing the need for Guests to visit a sales office.

Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom on Friday announced it had made its first shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Japan, the first step toward what it hopes will be a dominant presence in energy-hungry Asian markets.
   Gazprom delivered 145,000 cubic meters of LNG—the equivalent of about 92 million cubic meters of natural gas—that it had bought from the Mitsubishi Corporation, it said in a statement.
   The gas was delivered to the Chita terminal on the south coast of the island of Honshu. The terminal is run by the electricity company Chubu Electric.
   The statement did not specify where the LNG had been shipped from, and Gazprom could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.
   Mitsubishi, which sold the LNG to Gazprom, has joint LNG operations in Brunei, Malaysia, Oman, Indonesia, and other countries.
   ‘This succesful trading operation between Gazprom and Mitsubishi Corporation is the first step in Gazprom’s entry to the LNG market in the Asia-Pacific region,’ the statement said.
   ‘The market of countries in the Asia-Pacific region is a strategically important one for Gazprom.... Gazprom intends to hold a solid position on the Asian market both in the long-term supply of pipeline gas and by developing LNG trading, which it is relatively new to,’ it said.
   The Russian gas giant made two shipments of LNG to the United States, where it also hopes to claim a large share of the natural gas market, in late 2005 through a supply swap with Gaz de France.

President George W Bush’s lieutenants expressed frustration Friday at their failure to translate healthy economic growth into higher approval ratings for their embattled boss.
   Bush convened his senior economic policymakers for a summit at the president’s Camp David retreat to examine the steps needed to ensure that the US economy, in his words, ‘continues to lead the world’.
   The summit came a day after a Pew Research Centre survey found that 59 per cent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the economy.
   Only 33 per cent approved, a figure that has slumped from a high of 60 per cent recorded by Pew in January 2002.
   The US economy is now clearly turning down with growth hitting the brakes in the second quarter and the jobless rate ticking up, prompting the Federal Reserve to call off a long-running campaign of interest rate hikes.
   But the world’s largest economy is still growing faster than any of its industrialised peers, and Bush insisted: ‘The foundation of our economy is solid and is strong.
   ‘Because of the tax cuts we passed, American workers and families and small businesses are keeping more of the money they earned,’ he told reporters.
   ‘And they’re using that money to drive this economy of ours forward.’
   However, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged puzzlement about why the administration’s good-news message on the economy is failing to resonate with the public heading into mid-term elections in November.
   ‘That’s the 64,000-dollar question,’ he said on a media conference call after the summit meeting, which was joined by Edward Lazear, chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and White House budget chief Rob Portman.
   ‘I think a big part of it relates to the fact that many Americans aren’t feeling the benefit (despite being) clearly better off as a result of strong economic growth and job creation,’ Paulson said.
   High energy and healthcare costs were among the factors clouding Americans’ sense of personal prosperity, the Treasury chief said.
   ‘I would be optimistic that if we can keep the job creation and productivity levels high, you’re going to see wage growth follow this.’
   According to the Pew survey, the top three issues that respondents want to hear discussed by candidates for November’s elections to Congress are education, gasoline prices and health care. Iraq trailed in fourth place.
   Lazear indicated that rising discontent with the war in Iraq could also be overshadowing the administration’s attempts to sell the economy.
   ‘The one thing that we do know is that the more narrowly focussed the polls are on the economy, the better our responses,’ he said.
   Lazear stressed that indicators such as consumer confidence, spending and business investment all pointed to a truer indication of how Americans feel about the economy.
   ‘All of the indicators show the behaviour does not reflect the kinds of language we’re seeing in the polls,’ he said.
   Portman, who heads the Office of Management and Budget, said ‘we probably haven’t done as good a job communicating the strength of our economy’.
   Bush’s desire to deliver a more forceful message on the economy saw him ditch John Snow as his treasury secretary in July. Paulson was plucked from Wall Street to succeed Snow, who was seen as a lacklustre communicator.
   But if the polls are correct, the addition of the former Goldman Sachs banker has yet to translate into better perceptions of the administration, and the opposition Democrats are growing more confident heading into November.

Singapore Airlines has suspended the operations of its cargo venture in China after the United States imposed sanctions on the airline’s Chinese partner for allegedly supplying missile components to Iran.
   Great Wall Airlines (GWL) stopped operations after the US Treasury Department imposed the sanctions on the venture’s shareholder, China Great Wall Industry Corporation, Singapore Airlines said in a statement issued late Friday.
   ‘The suspension of operations follows a decision by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Treasury Department to impose sanctions on the parent company, and its subsidiaries,’ the statement said.
   ‘GWL is in discussion with agencies of the US Government with a view to bridging the impasse created by these sanctions, which have nothing to do with the operations of GWL,’ it added.
   It said Shanghai-based GWL relies on technical support from American companies for the safe and efficient operation of its aircraft. Arrangements are being made to transfer booked cargo to other carriers, the statement said.
   China Great Wall Industry Corporation owns 51 per cent of GWL, which was launched two months ago, while Singapore Airlines owns 25 per cent.
   The remaining 24 per cent is held by Singapore state-linked investment firm Temasek Holdings through Dahlia Investments.
   The US Treasury Department in June accused a US firm and four Chinese companies, including China Great Wall Industry Corporation, of supplying Iran with missile-related components and called for a freeze of any of their assets under US jurisdiction.

The European Commission has told the French energy groups Suez and Gaz de France their planned merger could be anti-competitive, the EU body said in a statement released on Saturday.
   The commission said it notified Suez and Gaz de France of its objections to the deal late on Friday, notably the effect it could have on electricity and gas markets in Belgium and France.
   EU experts expressed competitively concerns for Belgium’s ‘gas markets (trade, supply to different categories of clients)’ and ‘electricity markets (production, wholesale market, trade, supply to different categories of clients)’.
   In France, the proposed merger could adversely affect ‘gas markets (trade, supply to different categories of clients)’ and the ‘heating network market’, experts said after an in-depth inquiry that began in June.
   Suez and GDF must propose solutions for the anti-
   competition issues before the commission gives its formal ruling on the merger, due on October 25.
   The French government in June announced a plan to partly privatise the state-owned gas company GDF and create a world giant worth about 62 billion euros (79 billion dollars).
   Under the plan, announced following interest by the Italian energy group Enel in French energy and utilities group Suez, the state would cut its 80-per cent stake in GDF to 34 per cent, effectively privatising the gas company and allowing it to merge with Suez.

Crude futures plunged this week, in line with many commodity prices, amid evidence of an economic slowdown in the United States and a lowering of tensions in the Middle East, analysts said.
   But nickel prices hit a fresh historic record on keen demand, while coffee soared on concerns over stretched supplies.
   On Friday, the Commodities Research Bureau’s index of 17 commodities fell to 330.62 points, from 346.30 points the previous week.
   GOLD: On the London Bullion Market, gold prices dropped to 613.90 dollars per ounce at Friday’s late fixing.
   SILVER: On the London Bullion Market, silver prices fell to 12.01 dollars per ounce at Friday’s fixing.
   PALLADIUM AND PLATINUM: Platinum prices followed other precious metals lower, but palladium hit two-and-a-half month high on speculative buying.
   On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, platinum stood at 1,217 dollars per ounce at the late fixing Friday, from 1,245 dollars the previous week.
   Palladium rose to 334 dollars per ounce on Friday from 321 dollars the previous week.
   BASE METALS: Nickel, a metal used to help prevent corrosion, hit 29,200 dollars per tonne on Wednesday on the London Metal Exchange (LME).
   On Friday, three-month copper prices on the LME fell to 7,481 dollars per tonne from 7,910 dollars the previous week.
   Aluminium prices rose to 2,484 dollars per tonne.
   Nickel prices soared to 28,400 dollars per tonne.
   Lead prices advanced to 1,204 dollars per tonne.
   Zinc prices decreased to 3,295 dollars per tonne.
   Tin prices eased to 8,425 dollars per tonne.
   OIL: New York crude fell below the 70.0 dollar mark on Friday to lows last seen on June 21. In London, a barrel of Brent North Sea crude for delivery in October slumped to 71.92 dollars per barrel, from 75.99 dollars.
   SUGAR: On LIFFE, the price of a tonne of white sugar for October delivery dropped to 378 dollars, from 407 dollars a week earlier.
   GRAINS AND SOYA: On the Chicago Board of Trade, the price of wheat for September delivery fell to 3.61 US dollars per bushel on Friday, from 3.77 dollars a week earlier.
   On the LIFFE, the price of a tonne of wheat for November delivery firmed to 82.00 pounds on Friday, from 81.25 pounds.
   COTTON: On the New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE), the December contract stood at 54.80 US cents per pound on Friday, from 55.85 US cents a week earlier.
   The Cotton Outlook Index of physical cotton eased to 59.85 US cents on Thursday, from 59.90 US cents a week earlier.

The dollar recovered against the euro Friday after a fall in the wake of weaker-than-expected US consumer confidence data proved short-lived.
   The euro stood at 1.2825 dollars around 2100 GMT, unchanged from its level late Thursday in New York.
   The dollar was down at 115.77 yen, from 115.92, with the Japanese currency benefiting from China’s decision to raise interest rates for the second time in less than four months.
   The latest University of Michigan survey showed the headline consumer sentiment index fell sharply to 78.7 in August from 84.7 in July, well below analysts’ expectations.
   Standard Chartered currency analyst Marios Maratheftis said the data pushed the euro and the pound to the upper end of the day’s ranges. When they were unable to break above that, however, the dollar moved back up again.
   ‘This consolidation is likely to continue until the market is convinced that the Federal Reserve has finished hiking interest rates,’ he said, adding that currency trade remains rangebound at the moment.
   He said the market was still pricing in a chance of over 50 per cent that inflationary pressures will force the Fed to raise US rates again by the end of the year, after it recently called a halt to a long campaign of hikes.
   The pound was particularly weak, falling to 15-day lows against both the dollar and the euro.
   Sterling has been on the backfoot for much of this week after weaker-than-expected British inflation and retail sales data, as well as dovish Monetary Policy Committee minutes, dampened hopes that the Bank of England will raise interest rates in the autumn.
   The pound failed to make any headway earlier Friday after data yet again showed strong levels in both mortgage lending and money supply in Britain, both factors which are likely to worry rate-setters at the BoE.
   The pound was worth 1.8818 dollars at 2100 GMT, compared to 1.8847 late Thursday.

Software giant Microsoft said it was boosting its huge share buyback programme by a hefty 16.2 billion dollars.
   Other US companies are also moving to repurchase their stock, signalling they see limited investment opportunities in the US economy which has shown signs of slowing in recent months.
   Microsoft said it expects to acquire 155 million shares at 24.75 dollars per share for a total 3.8 billion dollars following a tender which expired late Thursday as part of its ramped-up buyback programme.
   The Washington-state based software-maker said it was now seeking to repurchase additional shares totalling 36.2 billion dollars in a programme stretching forward to June 30, 2011.
   The company had initially said in July that the programme was targetting about 20 billion dollars, prior to announcing Friday that it was increasing that target by 16.2 billion.

During his upcoming visit to China, President Hugo Chavez will offer to supply up to 20 per cent of the crude oil China needs if Beijing backs Venezuela’s bid to join the UN Security Council, analysts say.
   Chavez’s six-day visit to China starting Tuesday, the fourth since he was elected president in 1999, will be followed by stops in Malaysia and Angola.
   The tour is part of Chavez’s oil-based foreign policy and his determination to seek new clients for Venezuelan crude. Currently the United States is Venezuela’s main trade partner and by far its largest oil customer.
   Equally important is Chavez’s quest for new international recruits in his anti-US movement. In China, Chavez ‘sees an emerging power quietly growing and challenging US dominance,’ Caracas Metropolitan University political expert Elsa Cardoso told AFP.
   Chavez announced late Thursday that he would sign agreements covering energy, agriculture and food with Chinese leaders.
   Venezuela will buy a group of oil supertankers ‘so that Venezuela does not depend on renting oil tankers,’ Chavez said, adding that China also would help build tankers in Venezuela, without giving any specific dates.
   As he fashions himself into Washington’s staunchest adversary in Latin America along with Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Chavez wants China in his corner as he fights for a permanent Security Council seat for Venezuela. Russia came aboard only recently.
   Cooperation between Venezuela and China has increased over the past years, especially in the energy sector.
   Chavez is also scheduled to visit a site where Chinese engineers are building Venezuela’s first satellite, named after the father of the nation, Simon Bolivar.
   China’s rapprochement to the West ‘is not what Chavez is most attracted to,’ said Central University of Venezuela professor Franklin Molina.
   School of International Studies director Mervin Rodriguez said Chavez’s ‘21st Century Socialism’ goal is ill defined.
   ‘He seeks alternative routes to put a human face on the economy, although with a simplistic approach. Achieving a socialist change is not a short-term job,’ he said.
   Rodriguez also said it was ironic that while Chavez waves the socialist flag, China ‘is coming back from that road with an (economic) model that leaves much room for capitalism; what the Chinese call ‘two systems and two economies.’ In other words, a mixed economy.’
   Oil of course is a key factor in Venezuelan foreign policy.
   Venezuela has offered to export between 500,000 and one million barrels of oil a day to China if the South American nation reaches its goal of producing 5.8 million barrels of crude by 2012 and China’s demand for oil continues to rise.
   China’s state-owned oil company has had for the past four years oil exploration contracts for Venezuela’s Orinoco region, which Caracas wants certified as the world’s largest oil reserves.
   China is an attractive energy market for Venezuela, even though trade between China and Latin America represents only three per cent of the world trade flow, a small figure in which Brazil and Chile are the main partners.

Japan is to announce a fund worth up to 100 million dollars for a proposed 16-nation East Asian economic partnership intended to promote regional trade, state Bernama news agency reported Saturday.
   The proposal for the Comprehensive Economic Partnership in East Asia falls under the Nikai Initiative, which was drawn up by Japan’s trade minister Toshihiro Nikai after the 11th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005, Bernama said.
   The report cited an unnamed Japanese official as saying Tokyo was busy promoting the 16-nation free trade agreement to regional leaders in a bid to increase Asia’s economic integration.
   Nikai is expected to announce the fund at next week’s 38th ASEAN Economic Ministers meeting hosted by Kuala Lumpur, the official said.
   Japan’s proposed partnership groups together China, South Korea, India Australia, New Zealand, Japan itself and the 10-country ASEAN.
   The ambitious trade bloc would cover half the world’s population. Last year the 16 nations formed the East Asia Summit, which is seen as a precursor to the partnership.
   ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
   The region’s economic ministers will meet their counterparts from China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, New Zealand and the United States next week in an effort to liberalise trade.

The Chilean government has stepped into an escalating labor dispute at the world’s biggest copper mine after its operator, Anglo-Australian resources giant BHP Billiton, shut operations and broke off negotiations with striking workers.
   With the crippling strike at the Escondida Mine in its 12th day, President Michelle Bachelet sent Labor Minister Osvaldo Andrade into the fray to mediate.
   By the afternoon, company and union representatives were back at the bargaining table, meeting behind closed doors in the city of Antofagasta, the embarkation point for copper mined at the Escondida Mine, after nudges from the government, officials said.
   BHP Billiton said it had been forced to close the Escondida Mine in northern Chile because of safety concerns over actions taken by striking workers and would pursue legal actions against union workers who blocked access roads to the mine.
   ‘This is illegal pressure,’ Pedro Marin, a spokesman for the striking miners, told AFP. He accused BHP Billiton of trying to ‘scare’ workers.
   Labor Minister Andrade said earlier he was maintaining phone contact with regional authorities in Antofagasta. The mine, which produces eight per cent of the world’s copper output, is located nearby in the Atacama Desert.
   ‘If it’s necessary to take other measures, we will do it in due time,’ Andrade said, without providing details on his mission.
   News of the supply disruption pushed already-high world copper prices sharply higher. The metal in London was fetching more than 7,500 dollars per tonne, up from 7,290 dollars late Thursday.
   On Wednesday Bachelet had signaled the government’s readiness to intervene in the crippling strike, couching the politically loaded offer delicately: ‘It’s an issue between private parties.’
   BHP Billiton, the world’s largest miner, announced early Friday that it had closed operations indefinitely at the Escondida Mine and had ended negotiations with striking workers.
   BHP Billiton said it would take legal action against union workers who had blocked all access roads to the mine to keep out non-union workers.

International experts on Thursday promised Lebanon immediate assistance cleaning up a massive Mediterranean oil spill caused by the recent conflict, slated to cost over 50 million euros (64 million dollars).
   However the senior officials from the United Nations, European Union and the International Maritime Organisation meeting in this Greek port also said the precise threat constituted by the threat remained unknown.
   That was because, they told a meeting with ministers from Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Cyprus, inspection crews had no access to the affected area prior to this week’s ceasefire between Israeli forces and the Hezbollah militia.
   ‘To this day, we cannot tell you with any accuracy what amount of oil remains off shore on the sea,’ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director Achim Steiner told a news conference.
   ‘We have been condemned to work with satellite images and ad hoc observations because access to the area has been impossible in terms of aerial surveys and...(the collection of) water samples,’ he said.
   ‘(But) with every day that passes without us able to take remedial action on a significant scale, the cost of coping with this oil spill will increase,’ Steiner said.
   The experts met as armed only with shovels and plastic buckets, a few dozen volunteers struggled to scrape oil-stained sand off a Beirut beach as environmental groups began the monumental task of cleaning up tons of oil spilt across Lebanon’s coast.
   ‘We’re trying to move as much sand as possible today and tomorrow so we’ll know how many days it will take’ to clean Ramlet el-Bayda beach, said Nina Jamal of the Lebanese environmental group Green Line.
   UNEP estimates that between 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes of oil leaked from an electric plant bombed by Israel last month, polluting some 140 kilometers (87 miles) of the Lebanese coast and spreading north into Syrian waters.
   If all the oil from the damaged facility, 30 miles south of Beirut, were to seep into the sea, officials said, the environmental fallout could rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill that devastated Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
   Steiner said it was a matter of ‘utter urgency’ to identify the size of the oil spill and put in place a response mechanism to coordinate equipment, experts and financial support from donors.
   Ten countries have so far offered assistance in terms of funds and equipment, including Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Morocco, Norway and Spain.
   The European Commission
   is considering allocating a 10-million-euro fund for environmental restoration in Lebanon. And OPEC has also pledged support with an immediate donation of 200,000 dollars, Steiner said.
   Lebanon has identified some 30 areas along its coast affected by the oil spill to various degrees, including the historical port of Byblos and the Palm Island nature reserve.

The tobacco industry can breathe easier after a US federal judge issued a stinging rebuke of its lies about cigarettes but failed to impose punitive damages, analysts said Friday.
   Shares in the big tobacco companies such as Altria, the parent group of Marlboro maker Philip Morris, jumped following the release late Thursday of the 1,683-page opinion by Washington district judge Gladys Kessler.
   Ruling on a lawsuit first filed in 1999 by the US Department of Justice, Kessler ordered a ban from next January on the use of terms such as ‘light’, ‘low tar’ and ‘mild’ on cigarette packets.
   The judge catalogued decades of deception by the tobacco majors, including claims that there was nothing obviously harmful in cigarettes or that smoking by pregnant women did not harm babies.
   But she prompted an outcry from campaigners by rejecting government demands for ‘Big Tobacco’ to fund a 10-billion-dollar stop-smoking campaign. Nor did she agree to forbid cigarette advertising in motor sports.
   Citigroup tobacco analyst Bonnie Herzog wrote in a research note that the ruling, after a two-year conspiracy trial, was ‘overall favourable’ for the industry ‘given no financial damages were assessed’.
   ‘The litigation landscape has never been brighter and we expect new investors to take a fresh look at tobacco stocks,’ she said, citing reduced risk, favourable free cash flow and attractive valuations and dividends.
   The New York stock market agreed that despite being found guilty of orchestrating a decades-long conspiracy to mask the fact that smoking kills, the tobacco industry had got away with it.
   Altria’s share price jumped 3.22 dollars (3.99 per cent) to close at 83.97 dollars. The group said it would appeal against Kessler’s ruling.
   Among the other publicly traded defendants, RJ Reynolds Tobacco rallied 1.42 per cent to 64.98 dollars while US-listed stock in British American Tobacco (BAT) was up 1.06 per cent at 55.20.
   Kessler convicted Big Tobacco of racketeering, under a law that was originally framed to pursue gangland mobsters.
   But the market’s sanguine response suggested that the industry’s legal travails are no longer so threatening.
   The US government’s lawsuit was launched a year after American states in 1998 won a landmark settlement worth 246 billion dollars aimed at recovering the costs of treating smokers from the tobacco industry.
   But the industry got a reprieve last month when Florida’s Supreme Court tossed out a landmark 145-billion-dollar punitive damages award to hundreds of thousands of smokers, calling it ‘excessive’ under the law.
   ‘At first glance, it appears that Judge Kessler’s ruling in the Department of Justice lawsuit is just about as good as it gets (for the tobacco giants),’ Prudential Equity analyst Robert Campagnino said.
   ‘No damages, which is obviously the most important issue,’ he said.

Apple Computer has said it found no trace of child or forced labour at Chinese factories that make its popular iPod MP3 players.
   The Cupertino, California, company sent a team to China to investigate whether workers were compelled to work overtime to produce iPods, which command slightly more than 75 per cent of the worldwide MP3 player market.
   ‘The team reviewed personnel files and hiring practices and found no evidence whatsoever of the use of child labour or any form of forced labour,’ Apple said in a release posted at its website Friday.
   ‘The single largest complaint was the lack of overtime during non-peak periods.’
   Apple said it found that more than a quarter of the employees worked more than was allowed by company policy, which limits workweeks to 60 hours and calls for workers to have at least one day off a week.
   The supplier agreed to enforce Apple’s weekly overtime limits, according to the report.
   Inquiries into whether workers were unreasonably disciplined resulted in two employees telling of being made to stand at attention by supervisors, Apple said.
   ‘While we did not find this practice to be widespread, Apple has a zero tolerance policy for any instance, isolated or not, of any treatment of workers that could be interpreted as harsh,’ the report stated.
   ‘The supplier has launched an aggressive manager and employee training program to ensure such behaviour does not occur in the future.’

General Motors Corp has also trimmed production, the automaker’s chief said hours after Ford Motor Company announced a 21 per cent cut in fourth quarter production because of a sharp drop in sales of fuel-guzzling trucks and sports utility vehicles.
   ‘I’m not sure that’s bad news,’ GM chairman and CEO Richard Wagoner said of his company’s cuts Friday. ‘The fact is, you’ve got to build from market demand back. That’s what it seems to be these actions are all about.’
   GM trimmed production seven to eight per cent during the summer and has scaled back production of new full-size sports utility vehicles by suspending overtime, said Wagoner, who declined to detail his fourth-quarter production targets.
   The Chrysler Group also has limited the use of overtime in recent weeks, according to the company’s production reports.
   ‘I think the fuel price situation has been a little surprising to everyone,’ Wagoner said during an appearance in suburban Detroit.
   ‘It would have been hard to predict, for example, the current issues we have in the Middle East. These things hang out there. We have to react to that.’
   Wagoner noted GM will be launching a number of new cars and crossovers that offer better fuel economy later in the year.
   He said he is growing more optimistic about GM’s future although he warned that sales will be weak in the coming months.

Two islands off the northeast corner of Malaysia’s southern Johor state were hit by oil spills but authorities were not certain of the extent of the damage, a report said Saturday.
   Johor tourism and environment official Freddie Long said the oil spill was near the islands of Pulau Besar and Pulau Tengah, the Star newspaper reported.
   Both islands are located off the coast of Mersing, which is the main port for ferries to the popular beach resort of Pulau Tioman and more than 40 other islands in the area.
   ‘Department of Environment officers have been ordered to monitor the situation,’ the Star cited Long as saying. He said he was made aware of the spill at midday Friday.

Some 10,000 employees at German automaker Volkswagen’s assembly plant here went on strike Friday, demanding higher pay.
   At 1600 GMT, workers slammed the brakes on output at the central Mexico plant, where some 1,400 autos are produced each day for sale in Europe and the United States, after union leaders rejected a company offer for a four per cent pay raise and a 0.5 per cent increase in benefits.
   ‘The union does not consider itself responsible for the strike breaking out,’ said union leader Jose Luis Rodriguez.

Infosys founder to step down
The founder of India’s second biggest software exporter Infosys Technologies, NR Narayana Murthy, was due to step down as chairman Sunday, a month after the firm’s 25th anniversary. Murthy, son of a rural school teacher, grew the 20-billion-dollar company from an investment of just 250 dollars, a loan from his wife. Infosys Technologies, a pioneer of off-shore software outsourcing, has revenues of 2.1 billion dollars and employs 58,000 people in more than two dozen countries. ‘Infosys is a shining example of all the good that came out of liberalisation,’ Murthy told AFP at the time of the company anniversary. ‘There are a few good entrepreneurs and for them to succeed they require an incentive. That is the Infosys lesson.’ Daunted by red tape and archaic laws in the 1980s Murthy had considered selling the company, but economic reforms in 1991 allowed Infosys to finally take off and become one of the great success stories of India’s tech sector.
— AFP

Nokia, Siemens to team up
The Finnish telecom giant Nokia and Germany’s Siemens announced their intention to merge their telecom equipment and network operations to create a leading supplier on the market. A joint statement said each company will hold 50 per cent of thenew joint venture, Nokia Siemens Networks, with its annual sales forecast at 20 billion US dollars. Nokia Siemens Networks will have its operational headquarters in Helsinki, and boast strong regional headquarters in Munich, Germany, where three of the five divisions of the new company will be based. ‘We believe the partnership with Siemens is the most effective way to build the scale and broad product portfolio necessary to compete globally and create value for shareholders,’ said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of
Nokia.
— Xinhua

Air China’s share price drops
Trade in Air China shares, the national flag carrier, started Friday morning on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, with the opening price marginally lower than the issuance price. Air China saw its share price open at 2.78 yuan ($0.35) on the mainland bourse’s first trading day, 0.02 yuan lower than its issuance price. The airline issued 1.639 billion A-shares at a price of 2.80 yuan in its initial public offering (IPO) on the domestic stock market.
— Xinhua