 By Peter Graff LONDON, March 11 (Reuters) – British surveyors are recording falling housing prices by the worst margin since the market crashed in 1990, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors said on Tuesday. During the past three months, only four percent of surveyors reported prices rising, while 57 percent said they were falling,
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By Eadie Chen and Jason Subler BEIJING, March 11 (Reuters) – China’s consumer price inflation jumped in February to a near-12-year high of 8.7 percent, handing the central bank a dilemma over whether to raise interest rates even as the economy is coming off the boil. Inflation in January was 7.1 percent and economists had
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By Niluksi Koswanage PENANG, Malaysia, March 11 (Reuters) – The newly elected opposition took power in Malaysia’s industrial heartland on Tuesday and immediately said it would kill one of the nation’s sacred cows — affirmative action for majority ethnic Malays. “We will run the government administration free from the New Economic Policy that breeds cronyism,
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By Mubasher Bukhari LAHORE, Pakistan, March 11 (Reuters) – Two suspected suicide car bombs exploded in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Tuesday, one outside a government office, killing at least 20 people, police and officials said. Well over 500 people have been killed in Pakistan this year in a campaign of suicide bombings which
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By Leika Kihara and Yoko Nishikawa TOKYO, March 11 (Reuters) – The government’s pick to head Japan’s central bank said on Tuesday he would be an independent governor at a critical time for the economy, but a senior opposition lawmaker warned that his appointment could be vetoed. Toshiro Muto, currently a deputy governor at the
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Producer fruit and veg prices soar  The consumer price index for February 2008 increased by 0.50% over the previous month to 107.11, compared with 106.58 in January 2008. At the same time, the EU-harmonised consumer price inflation rate (HICP) rose by 4.7% year on year. Compared with the same period of the previous year,
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Registered unemployed down in Feb  The labour force in Cyprus rose by 5.1% in the whole of 2007 to 393,377 people, according to the results of the quarterly Labour Force Survey. Despite the rapid growth, all of the increase in the labour force was absorbed, as total employment rose by an even higher 5.8%
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Fitch Ratings affirmed the Republic of Cyprus’s Long-term foreign currency Issuer Default rating (IDR) at ‘AA-‘ (AA minus) with a Stable Outlook and Short-term foreign currency rating at ‘F1+’. The agency also affirmed the local currency IDR at ‘AA-‘ (AA minus) with a Stable Outlook and the Country Ceiling at ‘AAA’. “Membership of the euro
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Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said it had revised its long-term ratings outlook on The Russian Federation to positive from stable. At the same time, Standard & Poor’s affirmed its ‘BBB+/A-‘ long-term and ‘A-2’ short-term sovereign credit ratings, and its ‘A-‘ transfer and convertibility assessment. “The outlook revision reflects our expectation of further growth of
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Oil fell from record highs near $110 a barrel on Tuesday as the U.S. dollar rallied after the Federal Reserve and other central banks injected liquidity into strained financial1 markets. U.S. light crude for April delivery was down 75 cents at $107.15 a barrel by 1400 GMT, after it touched a record $109.72 a barrel
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