Gold demand in the UAE last year rose to 99.8 tons.

DUBAI, UAE, Feb. 17--Gold sales in the Middle East jumped last year as strong regional economies stoked demand for the precious metal, the World Gold Council (WGC) has said.
The precious metal rose more than 30 percent last year amid safe-haven buying due to credit market turmoil and worries about the health of the US economy, which sent the dollar to record lows, as well as record high oil prices. Spot gold hit a record high of $936.50 an ounce at the beginning of this month, TradeArabia wrote.
“Comparing the Middle East performance to the rest of the region... the high and volatile gold prices did not affect the gold market to the extreme as per the other regions,“ WGC managing director for Middle East, Turkey and Pakistan Moaz Barakat said.
Earlier this year the Middle East’s largest gold consumer virtually stopped exporting scrap gold as jewelers take advantage of record-high prices.
Demand in the UAE also rose. Gold demand for last year rose 8 percent to 99.8 tons, but it fell 8.1 percent to 19.3 tons in the fourth quarter.
Value of gold sales in the seven-member federation rose 23.8 percent to $2.6 billion last year.
Fourth-quarter sales value reached $516 million, almost 6 percent increase compared to the same period of the year before.
Last year’s demand in Egypt, the most populous Arab country, was up by 12.2 percent at 67.3 tons, while sales value rose 28.6 percent to $1.8 billion, boosted by growing tourism and a stronger economy, the WGC said.
The country’s fourth-quarter demand was up 8.8 percent at 17.4 tons valued at $465 million, as the economy expanded and more regional players jumped into the jewelry market.

GENEVA, Feb. 17--China suffered its first defeat at the World Trade Organization after it upheld a complaint by the United States, European Union and Canada over import tariffs on car parts, sources close to the case said.
WTO judges have handed China and the plaintiffs a confidential decision condemning the Chinese import rules, diplomats said, speaking in Geneva on condition of anonymity, AFP wrote on Sunday.
The case is the first time China has been the subject of a complaint that went all the way through to the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body since it joined the organization in 2001.
Beijing has a minimum local content requirement of 60 percent for home produced cars and if this is exceeded, it then levies the same tariff on the vehicle as it would if it was imported completely built.
China has said the rules aim to prevent tax evasion by companies who import whole cars as spare parts to avoid higher tariff rates.
The plaintiffs argued this measure violates China’s WTO accession agreement, which pledged a progressive opening up of its markets.
“It’s a move in the right direction,“ Canada’s Trade Minister David Emerson said of the WTO’s ruling. “It looks like (the WTO) thinking is in line with the arguments we’ve been making... Hopefully it’ll bring about a change in the practices that China’s been applying.“
WTO officials were not immediately available for comment. China’s commerce ministry also did not immediately comment.
“We heard about the case... and we’re looking into it now,“ said a commerce ministry official when contacted by AFP.
China is increasingly the focus of WTO complaints after keeping a relatively low profile in its first few years in the organization and as its booming economy sends exports all over the world.
In 2004, the United States said it planned to lodge a complaint at the Disputes Settlement Body over tax breaks for Chinese computer chip makers, but the two sides negotiated a solution four months later without the need for WTO arbitration.
Since then, Washington has lodged several other complaints against China with the WTO, including its record on protecting intellectual property rights in October last year.

In recent years, worldwide efforts to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism have assumed heightened importance. Money laundering and the financing of terrorism are global problems that not only threaten security, but also compromise the stability, transparency, and efficiency of financial systems, thus undermining economic prosperity, www1.worldbank.org wrote.
The global agenda to curb money laundering and the financing of terrorism calls for a cooperative approach among many different international bodies. Efforts to establish an international standard response against money laundering and the financing of terrorism have been led by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) and through the development of the FATF 40 recommendations which serve as the international framework for AML efforts. In October, 2001, FATF expanded its mission to include combating the financing of terrorism, and adopted eight special recommendations on terrorist financing. The boards of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have recognized these recommendations as the appropriate international standard for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism and intensified their work in this area.
The World Bank and the IMF have also established a collaborative framework with the FATF for conducting comprehensive AML/CFT assessments of countries’ compliance with the FATF 40+8 recommendations, using a single global methodology. The FATF adopted its new forty recommendations in June 2003, and the revised assessment methodology covering both the FATF forty recommendations and the eight special recommendations was subsequently adopted by the FATF in February 2004. The FATF worked in conjunction with the WB and IMF and FATF-style regional bodies (FSRBs) on revisions to the standards and the methodology which now have been endorsed by the IMF and WB. There is agreement that IMF, WB and the FATF will all use the common methodology in their forthcoming AML/CFT assessments and mutual evaluations. Similarly, the FSRBs are in the process of considering to agree to use the common methodology in their mutual evaluations.
The boards of WB and IMF have agreed to adopt a more comprehensive and integrated approach to conducting assessments of compliance with international standards for fighting money laundering and terrorist financing in member countries, and to step up the delivery of technical assistance to those countries whose financial systems are most at risk. The assessments are carried out as part of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) and lead to a Report on Observance of Standard and Codes (ROSCs).

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 17--Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has threatened to cut off oil sales to the US, said reports that making such a decision would hurt his country’s economy are false, and that Venezuelan oil can be sold anywhere.
Chavez denounced an editorial published this week in the Washington Post, which said the president’s government would be the “first victim“ if he decided to cut off oil sales to the US, Bloomberg wrote.
“If the US didn’t need the oil, they would have boycotted us a long time ago“, Chavez said in an interview on state television, according to an e-mailed statement from the information ministry. “Try it then. We’ve got more buyers than we can handle in the first place“.
Chavez’s threat to cut off the US stemmed from a conflict between Petroleos de Venezuela SA and Exxon Mobil Corp. The US company last month got court orders freezing $12.3 billion of the Venezuelan state oil company’s assets to ensure it will be compensated for its stake in a heavy crude joint venture that was nationalized last year.
Venezuelan Oil and Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said on Feb. 13 that the US State Department, which is trying to carry out an “economic war“ with the South American country, was behind the Exxon move. The State Department has said it had no part in Exxon’s actions.
PDVSA, as the state oil company is known, and Exxon are in arbitration to resolve the dispute.
Venezuela, the fourth-biggest supplier of foreign crude oil to the US, is already increasing oil exports to other countries, including China, Portugal and Japan, Chavez said, according to the statement.

SEATTLE, USA, Feb. 17--Most of Yahoo Inc’s top institutional shareholders may be more interested in making sure Microsoft Corp does not overpay for the web pioneer, because they have more money invested in the bigger software maker, a research report said.
Financial risk management analysis company RiskMetrics Group found that close to 90 percent of Yahoo’s institutional shareholders have a cross-holding in Microsoft, including most of the top 20--and generally have significantly more money invested in Microsoft, Reuters wrote.
The two companies are at a stand-off in Microsoft’s $41.7 billion unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo. Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for $31 a share in cash and stock, a bid which Yahoo’s board rejected, saying it undervalued the company.
Microsoft countered by saying that its offer was “full and fair,“ but did not say what it planned to do next. Analysts expect Microsoft to sweeten its bid, possibly to $35 a share, to clinch a deal.
Yahoo shares surged on news of the bid, but Microsoft shares have fallen. Shares of Microsoft were down 11 cents to $28.39 in Friday afternoon trading on Nasdaq, down 13 percent since the offer went public.
Yahoo’s stock was down 40 cents to $29.58, representing about a 2 percent premium to Microsoft’s half-cash and half-stock offer, which indicates investors are expecting a higher bid.
A shareholder that owns both the target and an acquirer will be more interested in the net benefit of a deal, RiskMetrics said. Shareholders with more money invested in Microsoft than Yahoo will most likely urge Yahoo not to push its case too hard.
“They may be more concerned with whether Microsoft will get caught up in a ’deal frenzy’ and suffer the ’winner’s curse’ by overpaying for Yahoo,“ RiskMetrics analysts wrote in an M&A Edge Note.
“We can expect shareholders who own both companies to pressure Yahoo directors to extract a material sweetener from Microsoft (which will help Yahoo directors save face) that isn’t seen to destroy the perceived benefits of the merger, prior to ... ultimately succumbing.“
Earlier this week, Yahoo’s second biggest shareholder, Legg Mason, urged Microsoft to raise its offer. In a letter to investors, Bill Miller, the star stock-picker at the US asset manager, estimated that fair value for Yahoo was around $40 per share.

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania,
Feb. 17--US President George W. Bush and his Tanzanian counterpart, Jakaya Kikwete on Sunday signed a five-year, 698-million-dollar US aid package for the east African country.
The Millennium Challenge compact aims to reduce poverty and boost economic growth with investments in road improvements, extending electrical service to communities that do have power, and increasing access to potable water, according to the US-run Millennium Challenge Corporation, AFP reported.
The two leaders signed the agreement--the largest MCC ever--at the start of a joint press conference after talks in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam, the second stop on Bush’s week-long, five-country trip to Africa.
Kikwete declared the pact would improve poor infrastructure that has been an “obstacle“ to the country’s development and said it showed “how deep you have Tanzania in your heart.“ “You will be remembered for many generations“ for helping Tanzania and Africa as a whole, Kikwete told Bush.
“We act not out of guilt, but out of compassion,“ Bush told his host. “We are partners in democracy.“ “My hope is that such an initiative will be part of an effort to transform parts of this country to become more hopeful places,“ said the US leader.

The combination of file pictures shows different DVD players of SonyÕs Blue-ray Disc recorder (l) and ToshibaÕs HD-DVD player.

GENEVA, Switzerland, Feb. 17--Swiss bank UBS could face billions of dollars more in subprime-related writedowns in 2008, which could tip it into a second year of losses, analysts warned investors, sending its shares tumbling again.
More writedowns could spell trouble for UBS’ plans to bolster capital with a 13 billion franc injection from Singapore and an unnamed Middle East investor. The plans are due to be put to a shareholder vote at an extraordinary meeting on Feb. 27, Reuters wrote.
The two investors will take a stake in UBS by subscribing to a mandatory note that is convertible into the bank’s stock. Even if the capital injection is approved, UBS might have to contemplate a rights issue, unless it can keep new writedowns to no more than 10 billion francs and spread the losses over the year, rather than take a huge charge in a single quarter.
Some said UBS might be only halfway through clearing the debris from the subprime loan disaster that has already saddled it with $18 billion in charges in 2007.