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NEW DELHI: India has scrapped tenders to import rice, saying it has enough stocks to manage despite a harvest shortfall following the worst monsoon in almost four decades.
A top-level cabinet committee on food cancelled the three tenders totalling 30,000 tonnes, which would have represented the first imports of the staple by India - a traditional exporter since the 1980s.
"We are not importing (rice). We have adequate stocks. We will review (the decision) if there is any need," Commerce Minister Anand Sharma told reporters late Friday after the committee met.
SYDNEY: Two executives at a banknote-making firm part-owned by Australia's central bank have been suspended over a police probe into alleged bribery and kickbacks, officials said.
The managing director and company secretary of Securency, in which the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has a 50 per cent stake, were stood down Friday pending police inquiries, said board chairman Bob Rankin.
"On 23 May 2009, allegations were made in The Age newspaper that payments made to agents by Securency International Pty Ltd may have been used by the agents to pay kickbacks to foreign government officials," Rankin said in a statement issued late Friday night.
WASHINGTON : US President Barack Obama, back from a tour of Asia, called Saturday for the United States to produce more goods to sell across the Pacific, touting trade as a way to revive the troubled US economy.
Facing rising unemployment and slipping poll numbers, Obama assured the public that creating new jobs back home was his top priority on the week-long tour that took him to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea.
"I traveled to Asia to open a new era of American engagement," Obama said in his weekly radio address, recorded while he was in Seoul.
MADRID : Thousands of Spanish farmers on Saturday marched through the streets of Madrid, halting traffic to protest the low prices they receive for their produce which they say is leading them to financial "ruin."
The farmers and their supporters came from across the country and they walked behind tractors along Madrid's main avenues under banners with the theme "The countryside is heading towards ruin, take action."
"Prices must be held steady. Producing a kilogramme of olives costs me three times more than the price they are sold for," a farmer from the southwestern region of Extremadura, Antonio Sanchez, told AFP.
THE HAGUE : Thousands of workers protested in four Dutch cities on Saturday against a government decision to increase the state retirement age from 65 to 67 by 2025.
"We think it is wrong for the government to seek to achieve savings by making people work longer," Paulus Plas, a spokesman for the country's largest labour organisation, the FNV, told AFP.
Plas said 20,000 to 30,000 workers took part in each of the protests, the largest of which took place in the western port city of Rotterdam, where he said up to 20,000 showed up.
NEW YORK: The world's largest airliner, an Air France A380, touched down in New York on Friday after completing the superjumbo jet's first Atlantic crossing from Europe to the United States.
The Airbus plane, carrying 538 passengers, left Paris earlier in the day and landed at 1:07 pm (1807 GMT) at J.F. Kennedy Airport, several minutes ahead of schedule, under crisp blue skies.
Two fire engines met the plane with a watery salute from their hosepipes as it taxied to its gate.
NEW YORK - The US dollar rose against most of its rivals on Friday as investors looked to hunker down with safe-haven assets amid fresh concerns about the strength of global economic recovery, analysts said.
The euro dropped to 1.4860 dollars at 2200 GMT from 1.4922 late in New York on Thursday.
Against the Japanese currency, also seen as a safe haven, the dollar eased slightly to 88.92 yen from 88.99 yen late on Thursday.
"The dollar is again better bid across the board while the commodity and growth leveraged currencies are again the laggards as the market appears reluctant to take on any new risk, and if anything look like they are content to take risk off the books as we head into year end," said Jon Gencher at BMO Capital Markets.
ANKARA : Turkey is determined to build a nuclear power plant and will launch a new project to replace a failed tender, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz was quoted as saying Saturday.
"The fact that the tender was scrapped does not mean that the process is scrapped. Our determination on nuclear power plants is persisting," Yildiz said in Kizilcahamam town, near Ankara, Anatolia news agency reported.
Energy authorities Friday cancelled a 2008 tender won by a Russian-led consortium to build Turkey's first nuclear power plant after a top administrative court suspended parts of the regulation governing the process.
VIENNA : Austria has begun talks with Russia in view of joining Moscow's South Stream gas pipeline project, Austrian newspapers reported on Saturday.
The economy ministry said it had opened negotiations with Russia on Friday regarding its potential involvement in the project, the daily Die Presse reported.
South Stream is seen as a rival to the EU's Nabucco pipeline, aimed at reducing Europe's dependence on Russian gas.
BERLIN : EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen has criticised informal financial pledges to General Motors by countries vying to save jobs at factories belonging to the automaker's European unit.
"I understand that some countries have already made informal promises. I find that alarming," he told German magazine Spiegel in comments to be published Monday.
According to Spiegel, GM Europe has received offers of 400 million euros (600 million dollars) from Britain and between 300 and 400 million euros from Spain, and Poland has offered tax breaks.
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Terra cotta warriors of Emperor Qin Shiuangdi exhibit arrives in Washington