UNITED KINGDOM

The U.S. dollar nursed big losses on Thursday and Asian government bonds rallied after the Federal Reserve vowed to buy long-dated U.S. Treasuries, reviving a practice not used in decades to revive an ailing economy.

To spearhead its push into Internet services, Nokia put users in charge when it opened in 2007 the networking site Mosh, which lets people post anything they want.

On March 18 A defiant Sudanese president rallied Arab supporters in Darfur by saying no war crimes court or the U.N. Security Council can touch even an eyelash on him even though an international order for his arrest has been issued.

Nine in 10 people expect their Internet service providers to offer open and unrestricted access to the Web, a survey showed on Wednesday. The survey, commissioned by Google, Yahoo and Web telephone company Skype, came as the European Parliament and EU states hold talks on a joint deal to reform the bloc's telecoms rules to boost competition.

The Vatican Wednesday defended Pope Benedict's opposition to the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS as activists, doctors and politicians criticized it as unrealistic, unscientific and dangerous.

German carmaker Opel and its U.S. parent General Motors have, to the knowledge of the German government, sufficient financing to see them through into April, a junior economy minister said on Wednesday.

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Wednesday as investors awaited decisions from the Federal Reserve's two-day policy setting meeting.

World share prices rose on Wednesday, while European government debt fell with forecast-beating U.S. housing data prompting more optimism among investors after the last week's rally.

What a difference a year makes.

Kenya has slashed its visa cost for UK nationals by 50%, from US$50 (£35) to US$25 (£18); fees will be waived completely for children under 16.

Rio Tinto named a new chairman to help get a planned $19.5 billion tie-up with China's Chinalco approved, as Australian politicians opposed to the deal raised their level of protest on Tuesday.

A drastic climate shift such as a thaw of Greenland's ice or death of the Amazon forest is more than 50 percent likely by the year 2200 in cases of strong global warming, according to a survey of experts.

Australian politicians turned up the heat against Rio Tinto Ltd/Plc's planned $19.5 billion tie-up with China's Chinalco, with one taking out television ads on Tuesday to push for the deal to be blocked.

The U.S. Treasury is expected to propose within days the creation of a systemic risk regulator, probably the Federal Reserve, to oversee banking and market problems that could threaten the economy.

Sudan's president said on Monday he wanted foreign aid groups to stop distributing aid in Sudan within a year, in an escalation in the country's defiant response to an international war crimes warrant against him.

No one yet has any real idea about when the global financial crisis will end, but one thing is certain: government budget deficits are headed into the stratosphere. Investors in the coming years will need to be persuaded to hold mountains of new debt.

Goldman Sachs and a parade of major European banks, including Deutsche Bank , France's Societe Generale and the UK's Barclays , were major beneficiaries of more than $90 billion of money paid out by AIG in the first three-and-a-half months after its bailout by the U.S. government last September.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc and a parade of European banks were the major beneficiaries of $93 billion in payments from AIG -- more than half of the U.S. taxpayer money spent to rescue the massive insurer.

Pakistan's government agreed on Monday to reinstate Iftikhar Chaudhry as chief justice in a surprise move to defuse a crisis and end agitation by lawyers and activists that had threatened to turn into violent confrontation.

The Dow and S&P 500 stock indexes rose on Monday, extending their recovery from 12-year lows reached this month, as investors became more hopeful that some stabilization may be returning to the banking sector.

The Dow and S&P 500 stock indexes rose on Monday, extending their recovery from 12-year lows reached this month, as investors became more hopeful that some stabilization may be returning to the banking sector.