Aussie dollar reaches record highs against U.S. dollar
Sydney, Australia (AHN) – The Australian dollar continued to surge higher in currency trading on Thursday reaching an all-time high in value against the U.S. dollar.
Trading saw the Australian dollar reach $1.0764 against the dollar with predictions it will climb to $1.10.
The $1.0764 figure was the highest value against the U.S. dollar that the Australian dollar has reached since it was allowed to float in value in 1983.
Trading has pushed the Australian dollar up 10 cents in currency pair trading against the dollar since mid-March.
In the meantime, the U.S. dollar has fallen in value against most of the world’s major currencies since Wednesday when Standard and Poor’s issued a warning on U.S. government debt being too high.
View full post on Foreign Exchange Market Stories
Winklevoss twins end legal battle with Facebook
The legal battle of the Winklevoss twins with the largest social networking site ended on Wednesday after the former Harvard University classmates of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped their appeal of a settlement they filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.
View full post on All Stories
High food prices do not mean a bigger supply
Contrary to popular perception, the current high food prices will not see more money flowing into agriculture in the long term, warned a new forecast released ahead of a critical meeting of agriculture ministers in Paris on 22 and 23 June.
View full post on All Stories
ExxonMobil hits oil field in Gulf of Mexico with potential yield of 700 M barrels
Irving, TX, United States (AHN) – ExxonMobil announced that it struck oil in the Gulf of Mexico with a potential yield of 700 million barrels. Aside from oil, ExxonMobil also found natural gas in its first deep water exploration after the moratorium placed by the U.S. government.
ExxonMobil President Steve Greenlee said on Wednesday that the oil find is one of the largest discoveries in the Gulf in the last 10 years. ExxonMobil spent $7.8 billion in the first quarter of 2011 developing new energy supplies.
An oil trader commented that ExxonMobil’s new discovery would provide sufficient oil to power the country for 28 days. The trader’s estimate is based on a daily consumption of 25 million barrels of oil.
While it is not the solution to the U.S. long-term demand for crude, the ExxonMobil find will likewise not create an impact on world oil supply and consumption.
Global use is 72 million barrels of crude oil daily. The ExxonMobil discovery could power the world for only 10 days, an industry expert reckoned.
However, it would definitely boost further ExxonMobil’s profits. The exploration firm registered profits of $10.7 billion last year. The 69 percent rise in profit is partly due to higher world oil prices. The soaring profits translated into $7 billion Q1 dividends for ExxonMobil stockholders.
View full post on All Stories
US slashes estimate for world corn stocks
US officials cut hopes for the domestic corn harvest, and make huge revisions to Chinese data, heightening concerns over world supplies
View full post on Commodities Stories
Russia grain losses exaggerated by up to 6m tonnes
Russia’s grain stocks may be far bigger than many observers believe, after farmers overestimated drought damage last year to claim compensation
View full post on Commodities Stories
Gulf Becomes Fault Line for Sunni –Shiite Tensions
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (TML) – Being a Saudi soccer fan is no fun these days. The reason has little to do with the players’ sportsmanship, but with the abuses fans have been forced to put up with in recent matches in Iran. “Death to Saudi Arabia,” shouted the Iranian fans during a game between the Iranian club of Piroozi and the Saudi club of Al-Ittihad May 3, as they tried to burn a Saudi flag.
On both sides of the Gulf – a body of water whose name is even a source of contention with a debate on whether it should be the Persian or Arab Gulf – tensions have risen both in the corridors of power and on the street. But rather than being defined as a struggle over national interests, both sides are determined to cast in religious terms – another chapter in a thousand-year-old contest between the Sunni and Shiite branches if Islam. And, unlike in the past, both sides are ready to talk about it openly, thereby fanning the flames.
“Arab Gulf countries have been concerned about Iran’s hegemonic plans for some time, but as a result of the Bahrain situation some of that fear has come to the fore in openly hostile rhetoric,” Salman Sheikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, a Qatar-based think tank, told The Media Line.
The war of words in the Gulf is filled with risk for the West. The region contains the world’s biggest reserves of oil and Iran is believed by the U.S. and Europe to be developing nuclear weapons to enhance its power. The U.S. has troops in Iraq and the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain.
The issue that enraged the Iranian fans was Bahrain, a tiny island kingdom situated just off the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia – a potential tinderbox where Sunni and Shiites live side by side in a country adjacent to some of the world’s biggest oil fields.
With an estimated 70% Shiite majority, but ruled by the Sunni Al-Khalifah dynasty, unrest erupted in the kingdom in February. The protestors demand political reforms and an end to discrimination, but in the eyes of the government and Sunni minority the rioters quickly revealed their sectarian nature.
Blaming Iran for sparking the unrest, King Hamed Al Khalifah, summoned Saudi and United Arab Emirates forces to quell the uprising in March, enraging Shiite Iran and failing to end the sectarian dispute. Dialogue between government and opposition broke down, and on May 17 seven Shiite parliament members from the Al-Wefaq party tendered their resignation, joining eleven Shiite colleagues who left parliament in March.
But the violence on the Iranian soccer court only expressed what many Gulf Arabs regard as Iran’s deep-seeded animosity to Arab culture. And now Arabs across the Gulf are starting to fight back.
Sectarian tensions have even spilled over into places like Kuwait, which traditionally enjoyed good inter-communal relations.
Three Kuwaiti Sunni Islamist lawmakers petitioned last month to question Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Sabah, barely two weeks into the tenure of his new government. A local version of a non-confidence vote, the question was titled “the damage caused to Kuwait’s national security as a result of his government’s foreign policy alignment with the Iranian regime.”
The move followed a visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi to Kuwait on May 18. Salehi was trying to calm Kuwaitis after an alleged Iranian spy chain was exposed in Kuwait. Two Iranians and a Kuwaiti were sentenced to death for forming the cell, reportedly associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Senior Iranian diplomats, including the ambassador, were banished from Kuwait.
“Loyalty to Arab land … is the common denominator defining the identity of the Gulf Arab, in spite of those who do not call it ‘the Arab Gulf’,” wrote Abd Al-Latif Al-Atiqi in an editorial in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabs on May 23, referring to the age-old dispute between Iran and the Arab world on the correct name for ‘the Gulf’.
“I have lived in Iran for 40 days and I speak some Persian. When watching a play in Teheran I witnessed all too well their deep hatred for everything Arab. I will not forget it my entire life,” Al-Atiqi wrote.
Sheikh warned that the failure to politically resolve the social unrest in Bahrain could lead to an open confrontation between Iran and Arab Gulf states.
“I’m worried that if the situation isn’t handled carefully, it could spin out of control,” Sheikh said, adding that even military confrontation could be imminent – stimulated by a host of unresolved political issues. Among those are a territorial dispute between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran over the tiny Gulf Islands of Abu-Mousa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb, which were allegedly illegally occupied by Iran in November 1971.
The political body spearheading the fight against what it dubs “Iranian expansionism” is the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Established in 1981 by six Gulf countries: Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia. Qatar, UAE and Oman, the GCC set out to contain the increasing Iranian influence in the Arab Gulf both economically and militarily. The Peninsula Shield Force, led by Saudi Arabia and deployed in Bahrain in March to quash Shiite-led anti government protests, was the GCC’s first tour de force in years.
GCC foreign ministers, traditionally cautious about arousing the Arab-Iranian tension, have broken their silence on Iran in recent months. In early March they condemned Iran’s “blatant” interference in Kuwait’s affairs after the spy chain was revealed. In April, the GCC condemned Iran again, saying the Iranian actions “aimed at destabilizing national security and spreading division and sectarian strife in GCC countries.”
Abdullah Al-Shayji, head of the political science department at Kuwait University, says Kuwaitis were growing increasingly wary of Iranian ambitions in the Gulf.
“We are in the midst of a cold war with Iran,” he says.
“There is widespread belief among many Kuwaitis that Iran is causing a lot of mischief in the area,” Al-Shayji told The Media Line. “It has supported the Syrian regime in its repression of its own people, as well as many non-state actors.”
Al-Shayji noted that the GCC foreign ministers have met four times recently to discuss Iran, using harsher language than ever before. But he says the cold war with Iran was unlikely to deteriorate into a full-fledged military conflict.
“The Iranians are smart, they won’t directly fight but rather continue to use their proxies in the region,” Al-Shayji says.
However, the Arab Gulf is investing a whopping $120 billion in military purchases, including advanced fighter planes and anti-missile defence systems over the coming years, indicating that military engagement with Iran is a very real scenario.
 
View full post on All Stories
British Labour Party seeks curb to spending cuts
London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – Britain’s Labour Party called on Chancellor George Osborne to curb the coalition spending cuts because of the economic slowdown the austerity measures caused.
The party cited the major dip in manufacturing and mortgage approvals as proofs of the threat of a double-dip recession. Britain’s purchasing managers’ index went down to 52.1 in May from 54.4 in April. The May figure is the weakest month in about two years, which indicates modest expansion only by the manufacturing sector.
For April, the Bank of England reported that mortgage approvals went down to a four-month low, amid a dip in business lending. Mortgage approvals decreased to 45,166 while consumer credit went up by only $750 million (GBP 500 million).
With these weak figures, the British Chambers of Commerce cut its growth forecast for the U.K. The chamber downgraded on Wednesday its outlook for 2011 to a 1.3 percent growth from 1.4 percent, and 2.2 percent from 2.3 percent for 2012.
In the same week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its 2011 growth forecast for Britain to 1.4 percent from 1.5 percent. The two forecasts are much lower than the 1.7 percent projection by Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility.
While BCC lowered its growth forecast, the chamber increased its forecast for the country’s inflation rate to 4.5 percent this year from 4.2 percent in March. The BCC predicts unemployment will go up by about 150,000 for the next 15 months.
The BCC explained its revised outlook to inflation and the coalition government’s austerity program.
However, not all the declines were because of the coalition government’s spending cuts. Some of its are because of an extra bank holiday in April and the impact of the Japanese industrial shutdown after the March 11 earthquake.
View full post on All Stories
Southern Cross chiefs netted £35m
Top executives sold their entire stakes in the care home company in late 2007, just before its shares began to plunge
View full post on UK Business Stories
Rice is king, but at a price
LONDON, United Kingdom (IRIN) – Most of us, when we worry about food prices, think short term – the price today compared with yesterday; the chance that the price will have gone up again tomorrow. But Oxfam this week risked some long term predictions, and came up with alarming results. They foresaw the steepest rise of all in the price of rice, with rice in China, for instance, becoming 80 percent more expensive by 2020, and 180 percent dearer by 2030.
The price of rice is obviously of huge concern in China, India and the rest of Asia, where it has always been the basis of the diet – just as the Middle East has traditionally depended on bread, Italy on pasta, northern Europe on potatoes and Africa on maize, cassava and root crops like yams.
But tastes in food are changing, driven by urban lifestyles and global communications. Consumers, no longer limited to what they can grow in their own area, look for foods which are easy to prepare and eat. The losers have been staples which need lengthy preparation – soaking, peeling and pounding. The winners have been pasta, noodles, and above all, rice, making the price of rice a matter of pressing concern far beyond the traditional rice-eating countries.
Nigeria has a rich tradition of foods based on local crops, amala (yam skin porridge) and eba (made from cassava), ogi (fermented cereal) and pounded yam. Rice used to be a party food, noodles practically unheard of. Now rice and noodle dishes are the staple of roadside food stalls, and every night in TV advertisements, smiling housewives feed their perfect families on instant noodles and jollof rice.
Forty years ago Nigerians ate an average of three kilograms of rice a year; now it is 35kg and rising. Nigeria is one of the world’s biggest rice importers, lying third (behind the Philippines and Iran) in 2008, the last year for which International Rice Research Institute figures are available.
It should add up to big profits for the international rice traders, and it does, but they are acutely aware of the vulnerability of the system. A senior executive from one of the world’s biggest global dealers in agricultural produce said this week he was really concerned about threats to, and the sustainability of the supply chain.
“Look at Africa,” Chris Brett, senior vice-president and global supply chain manager for Olam International, told an audience at the UK’s Institute of Development Studies (part of Sussex University). “It’s absolutely amazing how much food is imported. We know that the food security agenda is very important.”
Vulnerable to price fluctuations
Of all the world’s food commodities, rice is perhaps the must vulnerable to sudden shocks. The world may produce a huge amount of the grain, but nearly all of it is eaten in the countries where it is produced – only somewhere in the region of 5-7 percent is traded on the international markets. So there is a disproportionately large effect on the price when in a major producing country has a bad harvest, or stops exporting, as India did in 2008. The supply is not limitless. 1.3 million tons is the most rice Olam has traded on the international market in a year, but that has now fallen back a little to 1.1 million. Brett told his audience: “We seem to have hit a ceiling.”
The hunger for security of supply has led Olam into production and processing, and it is now working with 12,000 rice farmers and operating two mills in Nigeria, the country where it first started as a produce buying company more than 20 years ago. “We have decided that rice is a good business for us to be getting into. Nigeria imports 2.4 million tons of rice a year; it’s not rocket science to think that if you can produce it, there’s a market.”
Production has flourished. With help from US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) MARKETS scheme, an agribusiness initiative, the farmers’ associations have received loans for inputs and improved seed, and raised their yields from 1.5 to 4.4 tons a hectare. The once-derelict mills are turning out smartly packaged sacks of “Lobi” brand rice.
It is a secure source of supply within Nigeria and insulated from currency shocks, but Olam’s problem is that Lobi at the moment cannot compete with the popular imported brands from East Asia, either on quality or on price.
Poor quality
Among Nigerian customers, local rice has a poor reputation, often well deserved. Ola Bassey, a young professional woman from Lagos, told IRIN she never bought Nigerian-produced rice. “Some people buy it, it’s cheaper, but it’s just too much stress. You have all the bother of picking the sand and stones out of it – they get the kids to do it for punishment. People would rather pay extra and not have the hassle.”
Olam’s rice mills can deal with the sand and stones, but Brett admitted to IRIN that the quality of the Lobi rice itself was still not as good as that of Mama Gold, Olam’s premium brand of imported rice, just because of the varieties of rice used by the farmers.
Growing rice in Nigeria is also more expensive than growing it in Thailand, the Philippines or China. It is dry upland rice, produced without irrigation, and only one crop a year is possible. Farmers in East Asia cultivate wet paddy rice and can have three harvests a year.
At the moment Olam can sell Lobi more cheaply than the imported varieties because of the duty that has to be paid on imported rice. That duty has already been suspended once, for six months, in 2008. Brett’s nightmare is that a new rise in global food prices will lead to the removal of protection.
“The threat is that I wake up one morning and find the Federal Government has decided to cut import duty on imported rice. Nigerian farmers are never going to be as productive, and at the moment we don’t have the tonnage. But give us another two years, and we should see a stronger commercial viability.”
Currently Nigerian farmers produce only 10 percent of the rice sold on the local market, according to a USAID survey, while Thailand supplies 74 percent of the rice Nigerians buy.
eb/cb
– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.
View full post on All Stories
Day Trading- Fuji recalls women’s cruiser bicycles over fall hazard
- Get fully automated day trading system
- Wal-Mart reports more sales but lower Q4 profits
- SEC Warns Top Banker of Charges Over Magnetar Deal
- Taco Bell to launch new Dorito shells
- Questions loom as Europe inks new Greek bailout
- Make Easy Money with Automated Forex Trading
- Clock ticking for Egypt’s finances
- Diffa traders hit by Nigerian border closure
- Automated Forex Trading System
- Business loans
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Trading 101
- Stocks fall Friday amid European downgrade concerns
- U.S. stocks fall as eurozone worries overshadow jobs news
- Stocks up after jobless claims hit 3 1/2-year lows
- Stocks open lower on eurozone deal doubts
- Dow holds strong gains Wednesday after Fed move
- Stocks slide on euro worries; oil trades over $100 a barrel
- Markets open down Friday despite drop in unemployment rate
- U.S. stocks rally Friday ahead of weekend Eurozone summit
- Apple shares drop 5.3% in Germany following news of Jobs’s death
- U.S. considers fraud investigation into Chinese Internet companies
- Internet Money
- Business Credit Information
- Honda widens recall for airbag problem
- GM CEO: Earnings good, but not good enough
- Chinese companies buying automaker Saab
- Suzuki demands VW return shares after alleged contract breach
- Chrysler has best September since 2007
- Honda recalls million cars worldwide
- General Motors to manufacture plug-in Cadillac ELR plug-in hybrid electric car
- GM earnings soar 92 percent on global sales
- Volkswagen postpones MAN supervisory board takeover
-
