By ELAINE SHANNON
Time.com Sunday, Apr. 23, 2006 Ahead of this week's U.N. Security Council deadline for Iran to abandon its nuclear activities and an expected report from nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei, U.S. officials have been mapping a plan to hit the defiant regime. But the attacks will be financial, not military. The U.S. and its European allies will ask the council next month for a resolution that would pave the way for political and economic sanctions. If, as expected, Russia and China threaten a veto or stall, the U.S. intends to work outside the U.N. to isolate Tehran "diplomatically and economically," Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said last week. "Countries that trade with Iran ... ought to begin to rethink those commercial trade relationships."
Among the plan's first targets: Iran's accounts and financial institutions in Europe. |
By Philip Thornton, Economics Correspondent in Washington
The Independent 24 April 2006 Gordon Brown unveiled the biggest reform of the International Monetary Fund in almost four decades at the weekend as countries across the globe faced up to the need to prevent financial instability from triggering a global recession.
The Chancellor, who chairs the IMF's policy committee, said the fund would institute a new surveillance system to highlight the impact one country's policies had on other nations and the global economy. The move came at the end of a week that saw oil prices hit a new record, world trade talks move closer to collapse, and talks between the presidents of the United States and China end without any solid outcome. It followed a stern warning by the IMF's economists that world leaders had only a small window of opportunity to tackle threats to the global economy from oil prices, the record US trade deficit and the rise in protectionism. |
By Peg Mackey and Janet McBride
Reuters April 24, 2006 DOHA - OPEC ministers conceded on Monday there was nothing they could do to halt surging oil prices that threaten consumer nations' economies and could trigger a collapse in demand disastrous to producer states.
The group, already pumping as much as refiners can handle, concluded at talks here that raising its 28 million barrels per day output ceiling would not rein in runaway prices. "The market determines the oil price," Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi, OPEC's most influential voice, told reporters. |
AP
Sun Apr 23, 2006 CAMARILLO, Calif. - Retail gas prices across the country jumped an average of nearly a quarter per gallon in the past two weeks, according to a survey released Sunday.
Self-serve regular averaged $2.91 a gallon, up from $2.67 two weeks ago, said Trilby Lundberg, who publishes the nationwide Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations. |
By RON HARRIST
Associated Press Fri Apr 21, 10:01 PM ET JACKSON, Miss. - Thousands of Gulf Coast residents have been told they must repay millions of dollars in federal Hurricane Katrina benefits that were excessive or, in some cases, fraudulent.
In Mississippi alone, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it is seeking $4.7 million from 2,044 people, telling them in a form letter that they have four months to repay or set up a payment plan. Some storm victims got duplicate or extra benefits because of FEMA errors, FEMA spokesman Eugene Brezany said, and others might have received benefits for expenses that later were reimbursed by insurance settlements. |
By JIM ABRAMS
Associated Press Sun Apr 23, 2006 WASHINGTON - Squabbles over special treatment for bankrupt airlines and beleaguered auto companies are delaying final action in Congress on a pension bill that would affect millions of workers, retirees and taxpayers.
Lawmakers trying to merge House and Senate versions already have missed one deadline, April 15, when some companies had to recalculate their pension fund obligations. Memorial Day, May 29, is the new target for sending to President Bush a bill to prop up the finances of defined-benefit pension plans covering some 44 million people in the United States. |
www.chinaview.cn 2006-04-24 10:28:41
CARACAS, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan Minister of Light Industry and Trade Maria Cristina Iglesias announced on Sunday that her country had decided to withdraw from the Community of Andean Nations (CAN).
The pullout would be "a long process" of about five years, she said, but adding that Venezuela's relationship with other CAN members -- Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia -- would remain unchanged. |
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