Tag: Monday Business Edition

Chancellor Angela Merkel said the decision, hammered out by her centre-right coalition overnight, marked the start of a “fundamental” rethink of energy policy in the world’s number four economy.

“We want the electricity of the future to be safer and at the same time reliable and affordable,” Merkel told reporters as she accepted the findings of an expert commission on nuclear power she appointed in March in response to the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima plant.

Support for the government collapsed in the face of the beleaguered economy, soaring unemployment and massive street protests, a grim omen for 2012 general elections.

With 98.21 percent of the municipal ballots counted, the Socialists had just 27.81 percent of the total vote compared to 37.58 percent for their conservative Popular Party opponents.

Domininque Strauss-Kahn, who has played a key role in striving to tame Europe’s debt crisis, had been due at the talks that start from 1300 GMT.

Replaced by his number two John Lipsky as acting International Monetary Fund chief as he battles to clear his name, Strauss-Kahn’s arrest — just as he was leaving to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel — saw the euro wobble badly before recovering in Asian trade.

A high-level team of experts from the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank will pore over plans by the Greek government to economise some 26 billion euros over three years to help bring down the country’s enormous debt.

“The mission will begin on Tuesday,” a finance ministry source said.

Ruling and opposition lawmakers put aside their differences in an effort to launch efforts to rebuild the country’s quake-hit northeast as quickly as possible.

But analysts warned the passing of the budget will not ease pressure on under-fire Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who has faced criticism over the government’s handling of the crisis and the subsequent nuclear emergency.

Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, on Monday said production in Japan plunged 62.7 percent year on year in March, putting it in danger of falling this year from the global top spot it claimed from General Motors in 2008.

Domestic output slumped to 129,491 vehicles, which Kyodo News agency said was the lowest since records began in January 1976.

Negotiations on the sum and payback conditions in a deal expected to involve tens of billions of euros follow an evaluation mission last week to Lisbon by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The government of Prime Minister Jose Socrates government fell last month when parliament rejected an austerity plan, forcing Lisbon to bow to market pressure and seek an European Union-IMF bailout.

The bank had to be taken over by Afghanistan’s central bank after claims that former executives granted themselves off-the-book loans worth a reported 900 million dollars which were partly used to buy luxury properties in Dubai.

The crisis has highlighted chaos and corruption in Afghanistan’s financial system, more than nine years after Karzai’s Western-supported government replaced the Taliban regime following a US-led invasion in 2001.

The central bank re-released Friday’s quarterly Tankan survey to show the breakdown in the replies it received before and after the disasters.

With most of the responses from companies received before March 11, the survey does not fully reflect the impact of the quake.

In Gamzyuki, a tiny village in the Kaluga region, around 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Moscow, a fish farm has the ambitious goal of producing 16 tons of the sturgeon eggs per year by 2014.

Opened three years ago, it is one of dozens of sturgeon farms that have opened in Russia recently, aiming to rebuild the nation’s reputation as the world’s premium exporter of caviar.