POLITICS

Rescue officials and soldiers were rushing food to central Vietnam on Thursday asthousands needed urgent aid.

World oil markets are well supplied and there is no reason for OPEC to increase production despite a recent surge in prices, Venezuela's oil minister said on Wednesday.

President George W. Bush said on Wednesday that the U.S. economy was solid and well-positioned to deal with the stress from continuing financial market volatility.

Emerging economies will edge past the developed countries in terms of economic growth by 2050, the Ernst and Young European Attractiveness Survey 2007 has revealed.

Flooding in New York's subway lines ground the morning commute to a halt on Wednesday, angering New Yorkers who are facing rail and utility fee hikes to support an aging infrastructure.

In just eight words, the Federal Reserve waded deeper into a touchy debate over whether consumer spending can stand up to a housing market downturn.

Mortgage applications rose for the first time in three weeks as interest rates fell sharply and demand surged for home purchase and refinance loans, an industry group said on Wednesday.

Productivity climbed at a slower-than-expected pace in the second quarter and has gained only slightly over the past year, keeping alive the risk that rising wages could push up inflation.

Australia's construction industry remains fragile in July except for growth in engineering and commercial construction, according to a report released by the Australian Industry Group on Tuesday.

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday held benchmark U.S. interest rates steady and said that while tightening credit conditions had increased downside risks facing the economy, inflation was still its main concern. The decision by the central bank's Federal Open Market Committee kept the overnight federal funds rate at 5.25 percent, the level it hit in June 2006 after 17 straight quarter-percentage point increases.

Many Asian countries are facing huge costs to clean environmental damage done to surface and ground water due to a lack of investment in sanitation, a senior official at the Asian Development Bank said Tuesday ahead of a global conference on the issue.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to hold overnight interest rates steady and reaffirm concerns about inflation at its meeting on Tuesday, but may also acknowledge emerging signs of economic weakness. Fed policy makers began meeting this morning against a backdrop of unsettled financial markets and are expected to announce their decision on interest rates at 2:15 EDT.

Rescue crews worked through the predawn darkness on Tuesday on ways to find six miners trapped 1,500 feet underground after a coal mine collapsed in central Utah.

Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim has overtaken Microsoft founder Bill Gates as the world's wealthiest man with riches of $59 billion, Fortune magazine said on Monday.

Brazil is implementing the first of several infrastructure projects worth $265 billion that will make the country a huge construction site, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Monday.

Half of American homeowners do not expect their house to gain in value in the coming year although those who said the value of their property was declining appeared stable, according to a survey.

Argentina's July inflation came in at a lower-than-expected 0.5 percent, the government said on Monday, as official consumer price data again aroused analysts' suspicion of tampering.

The average price for land in Japan rose 8.6 percent to 126,000 yen ($1,050) per square meter at the start of 2007 compared to the previous year, The National Tax Agency said on Wednesday.

China is to provide energy-starved North Korea with 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil in mid-August as part of a nuclear disarmament deal Pyongyang reached with regional powers in February, Yonhap news agency said on Sunday.

Over-fishing has made Atlantic bluefin tuna a prized delicacy a century after the fish were scorned in Europe as pet food, according to studies on Sunday that urged better international protection.

Fears grew on Sunday that epidemics would strike the millions marooned or forced from their homes by South Asia's catastrophic floods.

India's opposition Hindu nationalists rejected a landmark nuclear cooperation agreement between New Delhi and Washington on Saturday, saying it was an assault on the country's nuclear sovereignty.

U.S. Federal Reserve officials meeting on Tuesday will grapple with how turmoil in financial markets and tighter credit may damage the economy, and could hint at some concern growth could falter.

Asia's two economic powerhouses, India and the People's Republic of China (PRC), are lagging behind in terms of economic well-being and living standards, despite accounting for 64 percent of GDP in a surveyed list of 23 Asian countries, a new study by the Asian Development Bank has revealed.

Young women who want to beat men to the big bucks should get a one-way ticket to the closest big U.S. city, a New York study showed.

Global cooperation is the only way to improve food safety, Chinese official media said on Sunday after yet another week of global anxiety about the quality of goods from China.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday passed a Democratic rewrite of U.S. energy policy that strips $16 billion in tax incentives away from Big Oil and puts it toward renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

It will likely avoid the downturn after the Games seen in Seoul in '88, Barcelona in '92 and Athens in '04.

India and China are the new drivers of global economic growth, replacing the United States and other developed countries, according to Rodrigo Rato, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.