24.08.2010
itar-tass

August 24 (Itar-Tass) -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a fishing industry conference in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on Tuesday.

The Russian fishing industry has rather good results, Putin told fishermen onboard the Mikhail Staritsyn trawler.

The catch neared 2.5 million tonnes as of July, which was larger than last year, he said.

At the same time, Putin said he measured the domestic fishing industry’ s success with the share of locally produced fish on th...

Fri Aug 20, 2010 11:44am
Reuters

The average petrol price in Britain fell slightly over the past month due mainly to a fall in the benchmark wholesale market, the Automobile Association said on Friday.

Petrol prices fell to 1.1652 pounds per litre in mid-August from 1.1746 pounds in mid-July.

Diesel prices dipped to 1.1915 pound per litre from 1.1973 pound over the same period, the association said.

The prices have come down in time to benefit motorists over the long bank holiday w...

By VINOD SREEHARSHA
Published: August 19, 2010
The New York Times

In a rare victory for Google and Yahoo Argentina, an appeals court has cleared the companies of defamation for including sex-related Web sites in their search results for an Argentine entertainer.

The appeals court overturned a lower-court ruling that had found the companies liable for defaming the entertainer, Virginia Da Cunha.

The lower-court decision last year had also ordered the companies to pay damages and rem...

Deutsche Welle
19.08.2010

The Bundesbank's decision to have most of its euro notes printed abroad has sparked protests by German currency printers, who fear large financial losses. Now the federal antitrust agency is investigating.

Plans by Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, to shift most production of its euro notes to foreign firms has angered domestic printers, who say hundreds of jobs could be lost due to a system that is inherently unfair.

Some 250 protesters demonstrated in ...

By Golnar Motevalli and Lorraine Turner
Reuters

Builders have already lost out on more than 5.7 billion pounds worth of work after Britain slashed investment in new schools and Balfour Beatty is most exposed to the cutbacks, Reuters research shows.

A survey of the 26 local authorities worst hit by a decision to freeze the last government's 55 billion pound Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme, shows contracts for dozens of schools had already been awarded or were close to being s...

16.08.2010, 23.23 itar-tass

Grain export ban creates new problems for farmers on domestic market

MOSCOW, August 16 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia’s export-oriented grain producers that have preserved their crops from the drought have encountered a new problem: despite high demand on the domestic market, it will be difficult for them to sell their products.

“Reorientation to the domestic market will be a rather painful process for southern producers,” Russian Grain Union President Arkady Z...

A series of catastrophes has hit the globe recently: devastating floods in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia, China's mudslides and the deluge of water that has submerged parts of Europe, including Germany.

While the latest wave of disasters may have induced a spike in insurance claims, the world's top insurers began counting the costs of the destruction several months ago.

That's hardly surprising, given many observers have pointed out hardly a month seems to have passed in 2010 without some ...

Reuters
(Editing by Tom Bergin and Jon Loades-Carter)

Mining giant Vedanta Resources (VED.L) will spend up to $9.6 billion acquiring as much as 60 percent of Cairn India (CAIL.BO), branching out into oil and gas and delivering a cash windfall to its current owners.

Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy (CNE.L), which holds 62.4 percent of Cairn India, said it would sell a stake of between 40 and 51 percent, using the proceeds to return "billions of dollars" to shareholders and invest in ...