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The World Bank has renewed its pressure on the government for legal immunity it has been seeking for the last few years.
   In a March 30 letter to the law minister, Moudud Ahmed, the bank’s vice-president for South Asia, Praful Patel, said, ‘We would appreciate your renewed confirmation in a letter to us that under Bangladesh law, our staff are immune from legal process with respect to acts performed by them in their official capacity (except when the Bank waives this immunity).’
    ‘We would also appreciate any assistance you can offer in ensuring that this immunity is understood and recognised by the local authorities in Bangladesh,’ it added.
   In the letter, the executive of the global lender mentioned that bank’s staffs were ‘threatened with arrest, seizure of assets and travel restrictions.’
   Such threats took place ‘in the context of the Khan litigation,’ he said.
   The World Bank has been seeking institutional immunity since 2002 following a lawsuit filed by its discharged staff member Ismet Zerin Khan, who challenged her termination.
   ‘We remained concerned that the personal immunity of our staff for official acts may be understood by local officials because of the public
   controversy concerning the Bank’s institutional immunity,’ the letter said.
   ‘We are also concerned that such misunderstandings could lead to unnecessary vexation of our staff as well as the unnecessary expenditure of time and expense by the Bank to protect our staff and clarify the situation,’ said Praful in the letter.
   Sources said that the bank is now planning to seek a court stay order to keep on hold a violation case before the end of tenure of the present country director, Christine I Wallich.
   A similar stay order was also sought ahead of departure of the lender’s former country head Frederick Temple.
   The government in July 2004 decided to provide the immunity to both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for their functions in Bangladesh by amending the Inter- national Financial Organisation Order 1972 But huge public protest forced the government to adopt a go-slow policy and the proposed amendment was placed to parliament in 2005 as a bill, which has been pending with the parliamentary standing committee for review.

Staggering power crisis is preventing the local exporters from reaping the benefit of the latest wage hike in China’s textile industry.
   China’s Guangdong province, which last year accounted for 31.3 per cent of China’s textile exports, has decided to raise the minimum wage by 17 to 42 per cent from July 1 threatening to further erode the export competitiveness of the industry.
   According to Chinese media reports, the proposed wage increases, expected to be phased in from July, will only compound the pressures driving manufacturers and buyers away from the Pearl River Delta, the textile hubs of China, to other countries, such as Bangladesh, Cambodia and India.
   Under the new wage structure, a worker would get monthly salary of between 800 yuan to 1,000 yuan, equivalent to Tk 6,400 to Tk 8,000.
   ‘Rising costs and continuing shortages of labour in China will certainly be an advantage for Bangladeshi manufacturers,’ Tipu Munshi, president of Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association, told the news agency.
   But continued power failure is taking away all these comparative benefits, he said.
   ‘As we are already taking orders at a lower profit margin
   to retain the competitiveness, wage and production rise in China can be a good news for us,’ he said.
   ‘But we won’t be able to harvest the benefits due to poor power supply and other capacity constraints.’
   President of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association (BKMEA) Fazlul Hoque said Bangladesh would definitely be benefited from the wage hike.
   But he added: ‘To materialise the benefit, we have to raise our capacity and ensure uninterrupted power supply.’
   The Chinese government is facing wide criticism from its exporters, who feared that the move would cost them heavily.

Speakers at a seminar on Saturday stressed that the country needs public awareness and long–term planning to overcome the existing socio-economic and political crisis.
   Although corruption, disparity and terrorism cloud the country’s future, still there is a ray of hope as Bangladesh has already made some progress in different areas, they said at a seminar titled ‘Shaping the future of Bangladesh.’
   Bangladesh Young Economist Association organised the seminar at the National Press Club in Dhaka.
   ‘The core problem in Bangladesh is that we always try to address any crisis when it becomes acute, because we have no long-term vision and plan,’ said economist Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, the keynote speaker of the session.
   ‘Despite a growth rate over 5 per cent for the last few years, income disparity widened between urban and rural
   people, rich and poor and man and woman, making the
   society highly imbalanced,’ he added.
   Ahmad noted that peoples’ confidence in national institutions eroded as corrupt people are dominating in parliament and election commission failing to perform duly.
   He also questioned the willingness of the government and opposition parties to have any fruitful discussion on election process reform.
   Ahmad, who is the president of the Bangladesh Economic Association, also said that inflation, oil price and foreign exchange volatility are the major economic crisis that the government failed to address and people are paying for the government’s inefficient handling of the issues.
   The economist suggested that the country needs to formulate a vision for social transformation and set strategies toward achieving the vision with reference to sustainable development.
   ASM Shahjahan, former advisor to the caretaker government, stressed strengthening of the local government to make poverty reduction drive effective.
   Senior banker Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled said if people continue to remain unaware, their resources will be plundered by their servants and they will be deprived finally.
   ‘If people rise as they did at Kansat, we can overcome most of the crisis,’ he added.
   The former deputy governor of the central bank expressed his optimism on Bangladesh’s advancement in future as he referred to Goldman Sachs projection that Bangladesh would be one of the next 11 economic powers by 2020.
   Journalist Ataus Samad said that the parties, which ran the government for the last 15 years, should explain to people why they failed to implement their election commitments.
   Finance division advisor A Sattar Bhuyian said that Bangladesh economy is maintaining surplus in current account balance when the US is facing record deficit.
   ‘We should not downgrade our achievements,’ he added.
   The Young Economist Association president, AZM Saleh and general secretary Badrul Munir also spoke at the function.

Export of tea, one of the major items of the country’s narrow export basket, recorded decline over the years despite its higher demand in the international market and the government’s high-sounding initiative to boost production.
   Bangladesh’s tea export declined about 30 per cent till February of the current fiscal year. And the item that once accounted for three per cent of the total export, now shares less than 0.9 per cent.
   Value of tea export came down to $15.84 million in the last fiscal compared to $47.47 million in 1997-98 fiscal, according to the Export Promotion Bureau statistics.
   Tea export marked significant fall at a time when four Bangladeshi brands — Dewrachhara, BTRI, Kazi & Kazi and Silwa — attracted Japanese, Pakistani and European buyers. One of the brands even made its way into the London’s Harrods Super Store in recent years.
   The commerce ministry, which also controls the Bangladesh tea board, has attributed the fall to increasing
   domestic consumption at a rate of three per cent, whereas production growth stands at best at 1 per cent. Almost 75 per cent of the tea produced in the
   country was consumed at home last year.
   The 20-year master plan at a cost of Tk 868 crore for revitalisation of the tea sector with a target to increase production by 100 per cent is yet to make any mark on the production growth as many of the existing gardens have become sick for lack of fresh plantation.
   Only 44 per cent of 114,288 hectares of land, owned by a total of 161 tea gardens, are now used for cultivation.
   However, experts at the Bangladesh Tea Research Institute at Srimongol, Habiganj, believe it is possible to increase production even by 300 per cent if the full potentials could be utilised.
   Also, the small holding tea cultivation project in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is yet to get desired momentum due to an earlier administrative difficulties and regional politics.

The United Arab Emirates and South Korea signed a series of accords Saturday, including a memorandum of understanding on stockpiling Emirati oil in South Korea, on the second day of a visit by the South Korean president.
   The MoU, whose terms have yet to be finalized, stipulates that South Korea will rent out facilities for stockpiling UAE crude oil, Mira Sun, a spokeswoman for President Roh Moo-Hyun, told AFP.
   Roh, arrived in Abu Dhabi Friday and will conclude his trip in Dubai on Sunday.
   Once finalized, the stockpiling deal will give the UAE a marketing gateway to northeastern Asia, one of the fastest growing markets for oil consumption, Sun said.
   The MoU was inked by state-owned Korean National Oil Co (KNOC) and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
   The UAE is South Korea’s second largest crude oil supplier, with shipments totaling 150 million barrels in 2005. Shipments of liquefied petroleum gas reached 642,000 tonnes last year, making Abu Dhabi the third biggest supplier of LPG to Seoul.

Bilateral trade between India and China could reach 100 billion dollars in less than 10 years, a Chinese trade official said in a statement released Friday.
   ‘China and India have a history of increasing bilateral trade for the last 10 years,’ Yu Ping, of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, told a meeting of Indian industry leaders.
   ‘Now we are setting a new target of 100 billon dollars that should be achieved by 2015,’ said Ping, according to a statement from the Confederation of Indian Industries, which organized the meeting.
   Trade between the former rivals, who fought a border war in 1962 but whose ties have blossomed lately, has surged from two billion dollars in 2000-01 to up to 18 billion dollars in the fiscal year ending March, Indian officials say.
   With bilateral trade between the two Asian nations growing at 44 per cent a year for the last five years, China looks set to overtake the United States as India’s largest trading partner.
   India’s trade with China will hit 20 billion dollars by the end of this year, Ping said, only slightly behind India’s trade with the US at 21 billion dollars.
   But Ping said India would have to take some concrete steps, such as lifting trade barriers and opening its markets further, in order to reach the 100 billion dollar mark, the statement said.
   India has used anti-dumping measures on Chinese products in recent years, including duties of up to 108 per cent imposed this month on silk goods worth 180 million dollars, the Press Trust of India reported this week.
   Ping said the two countries should expand beyond trade in natural resources into new areas.
   Chinese-made toys and electronic goods abound in India’s retail market while New Delhi has been shipping raw materials for Beijing’s booming construction sector.

The Asian Development Bank(ADB) has so far invested and sanctioned loan for Bangladesh about 10000 crore taka which constitute nearly 20 per cent of total ADB assistance to Bangladesh.
   This was stated by an official of ADB. The main focus of ADB was on strengthening power generation, transmission and distribution network.
   With ADB’s support, the Bangladesh Power Development Board was reorganised with the creation of the power grid company of Bangladesh limited and entrusted the firm with managing nationwide power transmission network, the ADB Official said.
   The franchise area of the Dhaka electric supply authority was substantially reduced by the shift in some of its areas to the newly established Dhaka Electric Supply Company Limited and the Rural Electrification Board.

The project on strengthening of seed certification agency under the Ministry of Agriculture had to incur a loss of Tk 24.42 lakh in the fiscals of 1998-99 and 1999-2000 due to lack of monitoring and financial anomalies, said an audit report submitted to the parliament in its 21st session.
   The Comptroller and Auditor General in a special audit report identified the financial irregularities under seven audit objections and submitted it to the president on January 1, 2006, which was placed before the parliament on May 8.
   The report also specified the reasons of the losses and made specific recommendations in this regard.
   The report said that the lack of monitoring, non-adherence to public and financial rules properly and weakness of administrative and internal management system were the reasons behind the irregularities, which caused the financial losses of the project.
   The report also observed that in absence of any action against the abusers of project money, certain goals of the project were hampered.
   The audit objections highlighted that 39 transports under the project still in use caused huge revenue loss; upgrading of salary scale through tampering caused a loss of Tk 25,930l in addition.
   Losses of stationary goods worth of Tk 1,78,500 and embezzlement of Tk 22,38,343 were also detected during the period between 1998-99 and 1999-2000.
   While talking about the audit objection, agriculture secretary Kazi Abul Kashem told New Age on Saturday that they would check the matter.
   The audit report stressed following the government regulations and financial policies in expenditure to ensure a well-balanced financial management for project and undertaking proper action based on the recommendations by the audit team.

Indonesia will have its first nuclear power plant on densely-populated Java island by 2015, the country’s energy minister said Saturday.
   ‘We have the blueprint. We will start the construction in six or seven years,’ Purnomo Yusgiantoro told AFP.
   The power plant, to be built in East Java, will have the capacity of 1,000 megawatts in the first phase, with the cost estimated at eight billion dollars, he said. The capacity will later be increased to 4,000 MW.
   ‘We are open to any investors who are interested in developing this project,’ he said.

The BGMEA surveillance teams have inspected 209 more factories in Dhaka and Chittagong during May 4-10 period as part of their three-month long crash programme to prevent fire incidents and ensuring safety measures in garment factories.
   During the period, one factory in Dhaka was found keeping its exit gates locked.
   During that time Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association teams have carried out fire drills in 98 garment factories around Dhaka city and 38 factories around Chittagong.
   BGMEA vice president Shahadat Hossain Chowdhury told BDNEWS Saturday ‘As per monitoring report of three weeks, the crash programme increased the awareness among the garment owners; that is why the number of factories keeping fire exits locked fell every week’.
   He also said “BGMEA would take the decision on 53 garment factories who will not have alternative stairs within the next week”.
   Out of the 209 inspected factories, fire exit gates of two factories in Dhaka were found locked during working hours. Punitive action was taken against those as per the Board meeting of BGMEA.
   One factory’s staircases were found blocked and show-cause notice was issued on it.
   BGMEA’s 10 surveillance teams in Dhaka and three teams in Chittagong with officials from the organisation’s safety, labour and compliance cells started the inspections in the member factories from April 1.
   The surveillance teams are monitoring the fire and safety measures, such as width of alternative stairs, number of fire extinguishers, hosepipe, buckets and drums, and existence of garment workers trained on fire safety.
   BGMEA has been carrying out the special awareness programme in the backdrop of growing criticism from all quarters at home and abroad over the manufacturers’ indifferent attitude in ensuring fire safety measures, congenial working environment and the latest fire tragedy in Chittagong that burnt alive some 54 workers in KTS garment.

The second Bangladesh-Malaysia Business Forum to be held in Kuala Lumpur next year is expected to generate more investments and joint ventures from Southeast Asia for Bangladesh.
   Bangladesh-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce will organise the forum at the Hotel Nikkor in the Malaysian capital, over a hundred Bangladeshi entrepreneurs and more than 300 from Malaysia are expected to exchange ideas on trade and investments.
   Abdul Matlub Ahmad, president of the chamber, said this while talking to BSS on Saturday. Malaysian prime minister will be invited to inaugurate the forum, he added.
   Matlub, one of the leading entrepreneurs of the country, said the forum would facilitate potential investors to know the details of Bangladesh’s investment climate and package of facilities offered here.
   Referring to the uninterrupted business scenario in most of the Asian countries like Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, he urged all for refraining from any activities that may harm the existing pro-investment environment in the country.
   ‘We have to consider economics apart from political impedes,’ Matlub said.

Shahab Uddin Khan, PMJF of Lions Club of Dhaka Rajanigandha Rajdhani, was elected district governor and Shah Zakir Hossain, PMJF of Lions Club of Dhaka Rajdhani, was elected vice district governor of the Lions Clubs International District 315 Al for the year 2006-2007 at the delegate session of 11th annual convention on May 6.
   The convention was held at China Bangladesh Friendship Conference Centre in Dhaka. The largely attended convention was inaugurated by the leader of opposition in parliament, Sheikh Hasina. The information minister, M Shamsul Islam, attended the banquet session as chief guest.

Softbank, the fast-growing Japanese Internet and telecommunications group, will work with Apple Computer to
   jointly develop mobile phones that have iPod music
   players functions, a report said Saturday.
   Softbank President Masayoshi Son and Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs met and reached a basic agreement on this partnership in cell phone handset operations, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said, without citing sources.
   The report did not disclose where and when the meeting took place.
   The new handsets are to be released in Japan sometime this year at the earliest, the Nihon Keizai said.
   Initially, the handsets would have to be connected to personal computers in order to access the iTunes Music Store to download music.

Bolivian President Evo Morales moved to reassure investors Friday at an EU-Latin American summit dominated by his warning that foreign firms would not be compensated for nationalized oil and gas resources.
   Bolivia will guarantee ‘genuine, long-lasting legal security’ to foreign companies operating on its territory, Morales said in a letter sent to Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos on Thursday and made public Friday at the summit in Vienna.
   He also said he wanted his country to become a member of the world’s leading oil cartel, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
   EU leaders used the forum to urge Bolivia, as well as oil-rich Venezuela, to cooperate with foreign powers and keep trade ties active.
   British Prime Minister Tony Blair called on Morales and anti-US Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to use their nations’ petroleum resources ‘responsibly’, according to his spokesman.
   Blair ‘sent a double message’ in letters to the two presidents although he did not meet them personally, spokesman Ian Gleeson said.
   ‘He said they should use their energy resources responsibly, and that in their own economic interest... they should work with foreign investors,’ Gleeson said.
   French President Jacques Chirac said Morales had reassured him that there would be no ‘expropriation’ of the goods of foreign oil companies.
   Chirac told reporters after meeting Morales that the Bolivian president ‘is anxious to have talks with energy companies and an agreement, at least this is what I understood, which rules out any attitude of expulsion or expropriation.’
   UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, also attending the summit, said that globalisation meant creating optimum conditions for investors who need to know ‘that the conditions under which they are making an investment will be sustained over the medium to the long term.’
   Morales claimed a stunning victory in Bolivia’s presidential election last December after pledging to take a bigger share of earnings from Bolivia’s vast energy resources and nationalize the country’s oil and gas reserves.
   Some 26 foreign companies, which include Brazil’s Petrobras firm and France’s Total, now have six months to renegotiate their contracts with Bolivia’s state-run hydrocarbons company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB).
   During the transition period, 82 per cent of profits will go to the Bolivian state and 18 per cent to the corporations.
   EU and Latin American leaders at the Vienna gathering warned that developing trade ties could be hit by populist moves by nations such as Bolivia and Venezuela to protect their energy sectors from foreign control.
   The summit of 60 heads of state and government heard calls for more balanced trade relations, with a joint final statement demanding a ‘more compatible regulatory regime.’
   The statement does not refer to Bolivia and Venezuela by name, but clearly has them in mind—as did some of the speakers at Friday’s plenary session. European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso called for a ‘convergence of interests, not only of values.’

The Israeli company that provides fuel to the Palestinian territories resumed supplies Friday as motorists rushed to tank up after a three-day stoppage that saw some petrol stations run dry.
   ‘Supplies have resumed. We have already received 1.5 million litres (330,000 gallons) at our depots this morning,’ Mujahid Salameh, head of the state-owned General Petroleum Corp (GPC) told AFP.
   Dor-Alon, the main supplier of fuel to the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, had stopped supplies early Tuesday, on the grounds of an unpaid debt of 120 million shekels (27 million dollars).
   If post-dated Palestinian Authority cheques to Dor-Alon were added to the amount in arrears, the debt would climb to 88 million dollars, Salameh said.
   Queues quickly formed in the West Bank town of Ramallah at petrol stations where GPC tankers dropped of early morning supplies and where business is typically sleepy on the weekly day of rest and prayers.
   ‘I had to wait more than quarter of an hour to fill up. There were perhaps 20 cars ahead of me,’ said Abu Karim driving out of one of the petrol stations in his four-wheel drive.
   Dor-Alon decided on Thursday to resume supplies after receiving assurances from Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas that a first tranche of 132 million shekels (29 million dollars) would be paid in the next few days, said Salameh.
   How the rest of the arrears will be paid will be decided during a meeting scheduled on Sunday between Palestinian officials and representatives of the Israeli company.
   ‘They promised to continue daily supplies in keeping with our needs, which are two million litres a day,’ Salameh said of Dor-Alon.

The US trade deficit shrank in March to its lowest level since Hurricane Katrina struck last year, helped by a surprise slump in oil imports, the government said Friday.
   The deficit sank to 62.0 billion dollars from 65.6 billion in February, the Commerce Department said. That confounded Wall Street forecasts for an expansion to 67.0 billion dollars.
   It was the best trade performance since August, and came in part thanks to record exports to some of the largest US trading partners.
   But the deficit widened with China, which stands accused in Washington of resorting to underhanded tactics to bolster its global commerce.
   It is the first time the deficit has declined for two straight months since October and November 2003. The fall was all the more surprising as exports of civilian aircraft, one of the few bright spots for US trade, dipped in March.
   The trade data boosted estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the first quarter, which was initially reported by the government at a robust 4.8 percent.
   However, economists warned that a long-running deterioration in the US trade picture was likely to resume after the slump in energy imports in March.
   ‘Exports were pretty strong in the month.
   That’s good to see. But the real surprise, which nobody saw coming, was the value of oil imports were down two billion dollars,’ Wachovia global economist Jay Bryson said.
   But he added: ‘It doesn’t smell right to me. So I would think that as we go forward, we’re going to see a big jump back in oil imports. We all know what’s happened to oil prices recently.’
   The Commerce Department said that imports in March fell 0.8 percent to 176.7 billion dollars, driven down by declines in the petroleum bill and in vehicle imports. Exports grew a faster 1.9 percent to 114.7 billion.
   Above all, the value of US imports of oil products dived in the month—the petroleum deficit was down to 20.1 billion dollars from 22.6 billion, its lowest level since July last year.
   However, crude prices have risen to new record highs since March, so the US oil import bill looks set to expand again.

Sakhalin Energy, a consortium headed by oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, said Friday it had signed a 20-year contract to supply Tokohu Electric of Japan with 420,000 tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year starting in 2010.
   The consortium, which is developing the Sakhalin-2 project located in Russia’s far east, said the gas would be supplied from a plant under construction at Aviva Bay at the southern end of Sakhalin Island. The overall project is 70 per cent completed, Sakhalin Energy said, adding that the plant will have a capacity of 9.6 million tonnes a year.
   ‘Japan is our closest neighbor and Tohoku Electric our closest Japanese customer,’ said Sakhalin Energy chief executive Ian Craig. ‘It takes one day sailing time from our LNG plant to Tohoku Electrics LNG receiving facilities, and it clearly demonstrates our competitive advantage in the Japanese market in terms of proximity.’

The lawyer for former Iraqi deputy premier Tareq Aziz said Saturday his client had been questioned in Baghdad by French judge Philippe Courroye and denied receiving bribes under the UN’s ‘Oil for Food’ program.
   ‘Judge Courroye questioned Tareq Aziz in the presence of an Iraqi judge, and Aziz told the judge that he refused to participate in a political settling of scores,’ said Badie Aref, Aziz’s lawyer.
   ‘Aziz said that offers from companies and individuals close to the Iraqi people were studied and retained, but those did not result in a single case of payment of commissions or taxes. ‘We sold oil to everyone at the same price’, he told the French judge,’ relayed Aref.
   ‘Aziz declined to answer a number of questions, in particular those regarding the names of French individuals implicated in the case,’ he added.
   Aref added that the judge will be returning in a week.
   A dozen people—including former interior minister Charles Pasqua and former diplomats—are under judicial investigation in France over their alleged role in the 64-billion-dollar UN scheme.
   The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, allowed Baghdad, which was under international sanctions, to sell limited quantities of oil so it could buy food and medicines for the Iraqi people.
   The program is the center of a vast international scandal, focusing on the use of oil vouchers granted by Baghdad to foreign personalities deemed to be well-disposed to the regime.

Gamers gave Nintendo’s new ‘Wii’ video game console a hands-down victory over Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 at the premier video games trade show that ended in Los Angeles on Friday.
   The innovative motion-sensing Wii controller and games that shied away from blood-and-guts action won praise, while the latest PlayStation met with unenthused satisfaction.
   Hard-core and novice video game players crammed into Nintendo’s warehouse-sized Wii pavilion and waited in a perpetual line outside.
   At the nearby PlayStation 3 exhibit at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), there was little wait to play on Sony’s yet-to-be-released console.
   ‘If that line would ever go down, I sure would want to try it,’ Teresa Holt, 28, of Texas said, nodding toward the Wii pavilion after finishing a PlayStation game.
   A random survey of PlayStation 3 gamers revealed that most thought the scenes were more realistic and the machine faster than its predecessor, but not worth the wait or the whopping price Sony planned to charge.
   With its 20-gigabyte disk drive, the PlayStation 3 that Sony intended to sell for 499 dollars in the United States was a ‘crap version’ that self-respecting gamers won’t settle for, said Jeff Sobol, an independent game publisher from Canada.
   Sony’s loaded 60-gigabyte model will sell for 599 dollars when the systems are released late this year, according to the Japanese company.
   Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is already on sale in the United States for 299 dollars or 399 dollars with a hard drive.
   The tricked-out PlayStation 3 ‘wasn’t that big of a jump over the Xbox 360’ made by US-based Microsoft, Sobol said.
   In the Wii pavilion, players blurted superlatives with giddy delight.
   ‘Sweet,’ one fellow chimed as he and a friend ogled motion-sensitive Wii controllers that came in ‘Zapper (gun), Nunchuk, Classic’ styles.
   ‘Awesome,’ Matt Callaway said after he and Jaap Tuinman finished playing video tennis by swinging Wii controllers like rackets.
   ‘I’m psyched; it’s exciting,’ Tuinman said. ‘It’s something I could play with my wife.’
   Nintendo heralded the system as ‘disruptive’ technology intended to revolutionize video game playing and lure new players to games by making the controls less intimidating.
   ‘It’s really fun,’ said Kappei Morishita. ‘I like it, and I’m in my forties. The current games get too complicated. This is back to basics. I could play with friends at a party.’
   Nintendo was coupling Wii with game software it hoped would appeal to ‘casual players’ such as Morishita. Among the video game offerings will be ‘Brain Age’ mind-tests, orchestra conducting, and hospital surgery.
   Nintendo will also roll-out a version of its popular cult game, The Legend of Zelda, made for Wii. Zelda was among the games people got to try.
   Ubisoft of France designed an action game, ‘Red Steel,’ to arrive at market alongside Wii.
   Nintendo had yet to reveal the Wii’s price, but it was rumored it would cost less than PlayStation 3 and be on par with XBox 360.
   ‘It is very unlikely Sony will take the lead going forward,’ said Hiroshi Kamide, an industry analyst with KBC Securities in Japan.
   ‘The logical choice is to buy Nintendo, and the price point is good. Microsoft and Sony will tie.’
   Industry analysts at E3 agreed that ‘at the end of the day, it’s all about the games’ and not the consoles.
   ‘People buy machines to play games,’ said Anita Frazier, an entertainment industry analyst with NPD Group in the United States.

Japan on Saturday confirmed its 26th case of madcow disease, the government said.
   A 68-month-old Holstein cow from a farm in northern Hokkaido prefecture was confirmed by the agriculture ministry to be infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
   The latest case of BSE, which all but wiped out Britain’s cattle industry in the 1990s, was found as Japanese officials explore ways to resume US beef imports, stopped due after madcow cases were found in the United States.
   Japan and the United States are to hold talks soon in Tokyo to discuss conditions needed by Japan to lift the ban, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing unnamed government sources.
   Tokyo wants to resume beef imports before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s expected trip to the United States in late June, the Yomiuri said.
   Japan, the only Asian country to have confirmed BSE cases, found its first madcow case in September 2001, prompting the government to screen every cow slaughtered for consumption—a step not taken by the United States.
   Japan, once the biggest export market for US beef, halted imports of US beef in December 2003 after a cow infected with BSE was discovered in the US state of Washington.
   In December last year Japan resumed beef imports, but it slapped a new ban on imported US beef on January 20 after a shipment violated Japanese safety guidelines requiring the removal of risky body parts.

Metals prices rallied to all-time highs this week on a rush of speculative buying amid geopolitical concerns and tight supplies.
   Metals were boosted also by news Wednesday that economic giant China planned to set up strategic reserves of copper, aluminium, uranium, coal, iron, and other key mineral resources over the next five years.
   ‘It’s been fireworks in the commodity market,’ said Corrie MacColl analyst Rashid Ahmed. Oil prices experienced a roller-coaster week as traders tracked supply developments in major producers and consumers.
   Among soft commodities, rubber prices bounced to a 22-year high in Tokyo.
   The Commodities Research Bureau’s index of 17 commodities advanced to 360.63 points on Friday, down from 350.80 points the previous week. The index hit a record 365.45 on Thursday.
   GOLD: On the London Bullion Market, the price of gold touched 730.40 dollars per ounce on Friday, which was last reached in January 1980.
   SILVER: On the London Bullion Market, silver prices raced to 14.94 dollars per ounce at Friday’s fixing, from 14.07 dollars the previous week.
   PALLADIUM AND PLATINUM: Platinum struck 1,340 dollars per ounce on Friday, giving it a 36-per cent jump in value since the start of 2006. Also
   Friday, palladium hit 406.50 dollars per ounce, the highest point since January 2002.Palladium leapt to 404 dollars per ounce on Friday from 380 dollars the previous week.
   BASE METALS: `Three-month aluminium prices hit a record 3,310 dollars per tonne on Thursday. The commodity is used predominantly by the transport and construction industries. Zinc, used to coat steel and iron, hit a historic peak of 4,000 dollars per tonne. Meanwhile nickel, which is mixed with other metals to provide resistance to heat and corrosion, reached an all-time summit of 21,200 dollars per tonne. ‘Further gains for most of the precious metals look likely in the short term.
   On Friday, three-month copper prices on the London Metal Exchange jumped to 8,590 dollars per tonne from 7,680 dollars on Friday of the previous week.
   Three-month aluminium prices leapt to 3,156 dollars per tonne compared with 2,900 dollars the previous week.
   Three-month nickel prices rose strongly to 20,043 dollars per tonne from 19,850 dollars.
   Three-month lead prices increased to 1,280 dollars per tonne from 1,225 dollars. Three-month zinc prices gained to 3,794 dollars per tonne from 3,470 dollars.
   Three-month tin prices rose to 9,600 dollars per tonne from 9,325 dollars.
   OIL: On Friday in London, a barrel of Brent North Sea crude for delivery in June climbed to 72.50 dollars per barrel, from 70.76 dollars on Friday of the previous week.
   In New York, a barrel of crude for delivery in June increased to 72.30 dollars per barrel on Friday from 70.00 dollars the previous week.
   RUBBER: On TOCOM, Tokyo’s commodity exchange, natural rubber for August delivery climbed to 270 yen per kilogramme on Friday, from 255.30 yen a week earlier.
   Singapore’s RSS 3 August contract increased to 237.75 US cents per kilogramme on Friday, from 220.50 cents a week earlier.
   COCOA: On the LIFFE, London’s futures exchange, the price of cocoa for July delivery rose to 873 pounds per tonne on Friday, from 861 pounds a week earlier.
   On the New York Board of Trade (NYBoT), the July contract gained to 1,568 dollars per tonne on Friday, from 1.512 dollars a week earlier.
   COFFEE: On LIFFE, Robusta quality for July delivery slid to 1,147 dollars per tonne on Friday, from 1,206 dollars a week earlier.
   On NYBoT, Arabica for July delivery stood at 102.90 US cents per pound on Friday, from 108.25 cents.
   SUGAR: On LIFFE, the price of a tonne of white sugar for August delivery gained to 491.50 dollars, from 472.50 dollars a week earlier.
   On NYBot, the price of unrefined sugar for July delivery stood at 17.64 US cents per pound, compared with 17.21 cents.
   GRAINS AND SOYA: On the Chicago Board of Trade, the price of wheat for July delivery rose to 4.06 US dollars per bushel on Friday, from 3.74 dollars a week earlier.
   Maize for July delivery gained to 2.60 dollars per bushel on Friday from 2.42 dollars.
   On the LIFFE, the price of a tonne of wheat for July delivery advanced to 79.40 pounds on Friday, from 77.90 pounds.
   COTTON: On the New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE), the July contract firmed to 51.65 US cents per pound on Friday, from 50.45 US cents a week earlier.
   WOOL: The Australian Eastern index closed at 7.13 Australian dollars per kilo on Thursday, compared with 7.08 Australian dollars a week earlier.
   The British Wooltops index stood at 407 pence on Thursday, compared with 413 pence a week earlier.

World oil prices fell Friday after the International Energy Agency lowered its forecast for global oil demand this year and foreign hostages were freed in major crude producer Nigeria.
   New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in June, dropped 1.42 dollars to 72.04 dollars per barrel in closing deals.
   In London, Brent North Sea crude for June delivery lost 1.11 dollars to close at 72.32 dollars.
   Prior to the falls, prices had risen by about two dollars since Wednesday due to the abduction of three foreign workers in the Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt, Iran’s nuclear crisis and tight gasoline stocks in the United States.
   Crude futures were lower Friday ‘as a report from the IEA cut its 2006 forecast for demand growth by 200,000 barrels per day to 1.25 million bpd as high prices have slowed consumption,’ Sucden analysts said in London.
   The report was ‘clearly bearish,’ said James Williams, analyst at WTRG Economics.
   John Kilduff at Fimat USA said that slowing global economic activity may reduce demand, but that he does not expect much relief from high prices. ‘The bottom line continues to be that while some economic damage is being wreaked by high prices, it is not enough, for now, to overwhelm the seeming surfeit of geopolitical troubles in oil producing countries around the world,’ he said.
   Regarding Nigeria, police confirmed Friday that three foreign oil workers seized Thursday in the Niger Delta had been freed.
   The three men worked for Saipem, a subsidiary of the Italian ENI oil group, and were kidnapped at Buguma about 30 kilometers (19 miles) southwest of Port Harcourt, capital of the oil-rich Rivers region.

India’s industrial output slows
India’s industrial output slowed to 8.0 per cent for the financial year to March, down from 8.4 per cent the previous year, official data showed Friday. For March, output decelerated to 7.7 per cent from the same month a year earlier, down from the previous month’s 8.8 rise, hit by a poor mining sector performance, the data from the Central Statistical Organisation showed. Mining, which encompasses coal and crude oil output, slowed to growth of 0.5 per cent in March from expansion of 6.6 a year earlier. ‘The mining sector was clearly hit by higher crude prices. The rest of the core sector and consumer goods, non-durables growth was on track,’ said Bidisha Ganguly, chief economist at BRICS Securities. ‘Keeping mining figures aside, industrial output growth has been on track.’ According to government figures, key sectors like automobiles, metals, textiles and food products posted year-on-year growth of between 15 and 22 per cent in March.
— AFP

China’s textile exports rally
China’s textile exports to the United States and the European Union in March reached 1.32 billion US dollars and 1.44 billion US dollars, up 20 per cent and 33.2 per cent from the same period last year, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC). Figures were pushed up by an increase in the amount of textiles exported which did not come under the quota restrictions imposed by the U.S. and the EU. Predictably exports of textile goods that were affected by the restrictions fell by a large margin. China’s exports of textile and clothes in March came to 10.54 billion US dollars, a 33.9 per cent increase. In February, the country’s textile exports to the US and the EU fell 13.3 per cent and 9.2 per cent respectively, from the previous year.
— Xinhua

Air Deccan plans
125-strong fleet
India’s first budget airline, Air Deccan, will add nearly a hundred planes over the next seven years, building a 125-strong fleet by 2013, a company official said on Friday ahead of a planned public stock offering. Devesh Desai, Air Deccan’s head of finance, said the airline would also add up to new 60 routes in the fiscal year ending March 2007, marking a major expansion from the 85 it already flies.
— Reuters