Month: November 2008

Categories
China

Winners and Losers from China’s Bailout

Marketwatch looks at who wins and who loses from the massive US$586 billion China stimulus package.

Led by miners and other commodities-related stocks, Asian and European markets rallied after Beijing unveiled the package, which is heavily focused on infrastructure spending.
“While unlikely to have an immediate effect, this is clearly to be positive for sentiment and, in time, commodity demand,” said analysts at Numis Securities.

Crude oil futures first surged over 7% before settling more than 2% higher, and corn futures also gained nearly 2%.

Gold gained $12.

Categories
Uncategorized

Kazakhstan pursues nuclear energy deal with India

Uranium from Kazakhstan will soon be powering Indian nuclear plants, the Kazakh ambassador to India revealed in a newspaper interview.

Kazakhstani envoy Kairat Umarov said state-owned Kazatompron was interested in exporting nuclear fuel to New Delhi, and assisting in the building of reactors.

“Kazakhstan today is the third biggest uranium producer after Canada and Australia. It is expected that by 2010, Kazakhstan will become the largest producer of uranium with production of 15,400 tons annually, which will be equal to 32 percent of the world’s total production,” Umarov said.

Categories
Cuba Culture & History

Venezuela and the Socialist Left of the World Unite

While it doesn’t pertain to Cuba per se, this excellent article in the New York Times takes a look at the current socialist salon being created by Hugo Chávez’s socialist government in Venezuela.

In hotel corridors where oilmen in business suits once hatched deals over glasses of whiskey, delegates in Birkenstocks and guayaberas discussed Marx and Antonio Gramsci, the leftist Italian writer. Such meetings have become a staple of life in Caracas, with Mr. Chávez’s government flush, at least for now, with petrodollars that can be used to attract sympathetic members of the chattering classes the world over.

Officials here have organized international encounters for philosophers, women’s rights advocates, the government spokesmen of nonaligned countries, poets and, in September, specialists in body painting.

Categories
Cambodia & Laos Russia

Russia Could Write Off Cambodian Debt

Russia is discussing with the Cambodian leadership the possibility of writing off most of Cambodia’s debt, which stands at around US$1.5 billion, a senior Russian lawmaker said on Monday.

“Russia and Cambodia are holding talks to write off Cambodia’s debt of around $1.5 billion. The principal sum (about 70%) of the debt could be written off as part of Russia’s participation in the Paris Club of Creditor Nations,” said Valery Yazev, deputy speaker of the lower house of Russia’s parliament

Categories
North Korea

North Korea Closing Border with South

North Korea is banning land crossings at its border with South Korea starting next month because of what it calls the South’s confrontational stance.

The North’s military is taking action to “restrict and cut off all the overland passage” across the frontier beginning Dec. 1, the country’s official Korean Central News Agency said. The move comes amid heightened tensions on the peninsula and repeated accusations from the North that Seoul’s conservative government is engaging in “confrontational” activities.

Prohibiting passage through the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas primarily would affect South Koreans working in an inter-Korean business complex in Kaesong.

Categories
Russia Uncategorized

The anti-West axis of Russia, Iran and Venezuela

Bound together by dislike for America, and confidence based on surging energy revenues, has appeared: an “axis of diesel”, as some have named it, comprising Russia, Iran and Venezuela. At least before the present financial crisis, the trio had been hobnobbing happily. Russia has sold billions of dollars’ worth of arms to Venezuela and blocked Western attempts to slap tougher sanctions on Iran. The Kremlin is also selling air-defence systems to the Iranians.

Categories
Russia

A belligerent state-of-the-nation address from Russia’s president

Alexander Golts, a Russian military analyst, says that this is the first time since the cold war that Russia has declared its intention to create a military threat to the West. Whether it can be backed by real military capabilities is another question. The timing of this threat looks particularly odd: even Soviet hawks used to wait for six months after an American election to make big statements of military strategy.

Categories
Cambodia & Laos

Hun Sen: Cambodia to see 7% growth

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday he was committed to maintaining annual economic growth of seven percent, after warnings that the country’s red-hot economy would soon slow.”The government are well aware that the strategic plans are highly ambitious amid the global economic crisis,” Hun Sen said at Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace.

Categories
Central Asia

Turkmenistan approves Nabucco gas pipeline

Nabucco, the gas pipeline project that hopes to bypass Russia and reduce European dependence on Gazprom supplies, received a positive nod from Turkmenistan during a meeting between President Berdymuhamedov and Ms. Maria Reich-Rohrwig (phonetically spelled), Austrian envoy at large for Nabucco.

Categories
Cuba Legal & Regulatory

Cuba Sues Kansas City Company of Use of Havana

From MyFoxKC:

Cuba is suing a Kansas City, Kansas company over its use of the word “Havana” to describe some of its products.

Habanos is run by the Cuban government and says cigar cutter company Xikar is infringing on the government’s trademark of the word “Havana.”

Xikar sells a cigar accessories collection called the “Havana Collection.” According to the suit, Cuba says Xikar “promotes it’s goods by deliberately and falsely associating those goods with Havana, Cuba” even though the items are not made in Havana.