CHINA

The International Monetary Fund replaced its European Director with a powerful, well-connected, insider on Wednesday in a sign the global lender is setting a more forceful course of action in dealing with the European crisis.

Growing investor demand for silver will help boost its price above $50 per ounce by the end of next year, a top official at Thomson Reuters GFMS said Wednesday.

China-based Qihoo 360 Technology Co (QIHU.N) posted better-than-expected quarterly results and forecast strong revenue for the current quarter as the provider of antivirus software draws more money from online advertising.

Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent won more of the emerging market for LTE wireless network technology in the third quarter, helped by their strong position in the United States, researcher Dell'Oro said.

Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent won more of the emerging market for LTE wireless network technology in the third quarter, helped by their strong position in the United States, researcher Dell'Oro said.

Qualcomm Inc on Wednesday affirmed its long-term growth target of at least 10 percent for annual revenue and earnings per share, citing strong demand for smartphones and other wireless devices.

LANDesk Software, the venerable desktop management systems developer, is tapping into the burgeoning market of mobile platforms with new security systems.

The new ad campaign is part of Benetton's Unhate Foundation.

Several factors are at work in oil's latest push back above the psychologically-significant $100 per barrel level -- a price that U.S. motorists wince at.

China's Huawei Technologies , which has aggressively grabbed around the fifth of mobile telecom gear market, has shifted its focus on improving its margins after it has got a large enough foothold in the market, a company official said.

According to the rumor mill the successor to the Xbox 360 could be some sort of cloud-gaming hybrid mixing physical discs with an online service. Analysts have been busy trying to figure out Microsoft's next move.

Five different Chinese environmental groups told Apple that as many as 22 different parts suppliers of Apple products had been releasing toxic gases and heavy metal sludge into the environment.

The conflict between humanity and nature has never been as serious as it is today.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said it may take similar skills to navigate Washington politics as it does to make advances in physics research, a field in which he won a Nobel Prize in 1997.

Eighteen school children were killed in China when an overloaded school bus collided with a truck in Gansu province.

A budget crunch in Swaziland, Africa's last absolute monarchy, has reached a critical stage with the government struggling to maintain spending on HIV/AIDS, education and the elderly, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe won praise on Wednesday as a great African figure and old friend of Beijing, underscoring China's commitment to boosting business ties to a leader shunned by Western governments.

Canadian stocks looked set to open lower on Wednesday along with commodities on investor fear of contagion from the weakest debt-ridden euro zone economies such as Greece into bigger ones such as Italy, Spain and even France.

China's Shandong Gold Group, the parent of Shandong Gold Mining and a big gold producer, has made a $1 billion offer to acquire Brazil's Jaguar Mining, two sources close to the deal told Reuters on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Wednesday unveiled plans for a deepening of the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific, starting with thousands of U.S. Marines operating out of a de facto military base in the Australian port of Darwin.

Regional cold war between India and China seems to be warming up. Maldives described India as its best friend but China is trying to woo the island country.