Daily News Channel
Japan’s GDP fell 4 percent last quarter, the fastest pace on record, the government said on Wednesday. The January-March quarter for Japan was 15.4 percent lower than the same time period last year, according to figures released by the Cabinet Office.
Kuwait elected its first female lawmakers in the conservative Gulf state where men have dominated parliament for nearly five decades. Four women won parliamentary seats in the general elections Saturday, the official Kuwait News Agency said
Clashes between Somalia’s transitional government and the Al-Shabab militia left 103 people dead and 420 others wounded, Somali officials said Friday. The fighting in Mogadishu between the rebel group and the government has raged for nine days, said Farhan Ali Mohamud, information minister of the Somali government. The new round of fighting stems from an interpretation of sharia law, or Islamic law, the spokesman said
Sri Lankan officials on Sunday disavowed rebel claims that government troops had indiscriminately shelled a no-fire zone, killing many civilians Saturday night and Sunday morning. The accusations came after the government announced Thursday that it had “re-demarcated” the no-fire zone to encompass a new area 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) long and 1.5 kilometers (0.9 mile) wide
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, speaking via satellite to a bank conference sponsored by the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, said on Thursday morning that the stress tests ‘will allow, I hope, for greater confidence in the banks.’ But even though the stress tests are over, the banks and their investors are not out of the woods.
Rain-induced flooding over large parts of Brazil have killed at least 31 people and left another 500,000 homeless, the government’s civil defense agency said Thursday.
A magnitude-7.9 earthquake that struck southwestern China last year killed 5,335 students and left an additional 546 children disabled, state media reported. The first official tally of students killed in the Sichuan province quake was released Thursday by Tu Wentao, the head of the province’s education department, the Xinhua news agency said. As of September, official figures put the death toll at 69,227, with more than 17,923 people missing
Nepal’s Maoist government took the president to task Monday for ordering the country’s army chief of staff to stay in office after they had fired him, calling the decision "unconstitutional." “Neither the constitution nor the Military Act gives the President the right to do anything besides supporting the government’s decision,” said Krishna Bahadur Mahara, the minister for information and communication. Late Sunday night, President Ram Baran Yadav ordered Gen.
The Pakistani army launched an offensive Sunday to rout out militants from the Lower Dir district that neighbors the violence-plagued northwestern Swat region. Army Col. Attiq Ahmed told CNN of the operation, and a Taliban spokesman in the area confirmed it
Spain’s jobless rate rose sharply, to 17.36 percent in the first quarter, with more than 4 million people out of work, the government said Friday. Nearly half of the 4 million lost their jobs in the past year, the National Statistics Institute said. It’s the first time that Spain’s jobless total has exceeded 4 million, economist Carlos Maravall told CNN.