Tag: Evening Edition

World Bank president Robert Zoellick cited soaring food prices as “the biggest threat to the poor around the world.”

“We are in a danger zone because prices have already gone up; stocks for many commodities are relatively low,” Zoellick said in a news conference opening the annual World Bank-International Monetary Fund spring meetings.

“We’d like to tell people it’s over, but the oil will still wash up every time it storms,” said Jay LaFont, Grand Isle’s deputy mayor.

People here are used to dealing with disasters. They’ve had to rebuild from four major hurricanes — Katrina, Rita, Ike and Gustav — in the past five years alone.

President Dmitry Medvedev hosted a glittering Kremlin reception that brought together legendary cosmonauts and astronauts with the rarely seen widow of Gagarin, and pledged that space exploration would remain a priority for modern Russia.

“Fifty years ago, Yuri Gagarin opened a new era in human history,” Medvedev said as Gagarin’s widow Valentina Gagarina looked on along with their two daughters.

“I want us to lay down arms and to enter the civilian part of the crisis, which should be completed rapidly for life in the country to resume,” Gbagbo said on his rival Alassane Ouattara’s TCI channel shortly after his capture.

Gbagbo, who has held power since 2000 and stubbornly refused to admit defeat in November’s presidential election, was detained and taken to his rival’s temporary hotel headquarters with his wife Simone and son Michel.

Iceland’s government insisted it could pay back more than 90 percent of the money lost, despite most voters having rejected a deal to refund 3.9 billion euros ($5.6 billion) to the two countries, according to partial results.

“The Icelandic state has absolutely no problem in repaying its debts” resulting from the collapse of the Icesave bank, Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson told reporters.

Anibal Cavaco Silva said that with new elections due on June 5 “what we need now is an interim programme so that the next government can take part in the final negotiations, because it is the next government that will implement” the deal that emerges.

“It’s understandable (and) we need, let’s say, a little imagination on the part of European institutions to come up with a suitable interim programme,” he added.

The third EU bailout to member states within a year will need to be around 80 billion euros ($115 billion) EU finance commissioner Olli Rehn said.

Loans to Lisbon, after Greece and Ireland last year, will be conditional on more public spending cuts, tax rises and far-reaching privatisations — negotiated with Portuguese politicians facing an angry, fearful electorate around June 5 polls.

Power was cut to parts of the northeast of the country, much of which is still struggling with the effects of the monster tsunami that roared ashore four weeks ago.

The new quake caused a handful of injuries, national broadcaster NHK said, but there were no reported deaths. The tsunami alert was later cancelled after no deadly wave materialised.

Berlusconi himself did not attend the hearing and the judges immediately adjourned the trial until May 31. The woman at the centre of the case, Karima El Mahroug — nicknamed “Ruby the Heart Stealer” — was not present either.

The hearing at Milan’s main court building lasted just under 10 minutes and a handful of protesters rallied outside both for and against Berlusconi.