Daily News Channel
Global stock markets were reeling Monday as U.S. insurance giant AIG revealed a monumental quarterly loss of $62 billion and UK bank HSBC announced a huge slump in profits. AIG’s announcement came hours after the U.S.
Stock markets in Asia and Europe were reeling Monday amid fresh concerns over the strength of the global banking industry as HSBC announced a huge slump in profits and the U.S. government said it would pump $30 billion into ailing insurance giant AIG. London’s FTSE dropped more than 3 percent in early trading to drop below 3,700 points — a six-year low — with banking stocks leading the slide
The winning bidder of a pair of Chinese bronzes auctioned off in Paris, France, emerged Monday as a collection adviser from China’s National Treasures Fund, and he has refused to pay, Xinhua news agency reported. Cai Mingchao placed the $39.63 million (31.49 million euro) phone bid on Wednesday for the two sculptured bronze heads of a rat and a rabbit dating from China’s Qing Dynasty. The relics were part of the late Yves Saint Laurent’s private collection of arts and antiquities.
For pro-surfers like nine-time world champion Kelly Slater, flying from continent to continent looking for the perfect wave seems like a freewheeling lifestyle, but for amateurs, it requires careful planning. Surfers checking out unique vibes at sites in Australia, Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii and France are driven by the buzz that comes from exhilarating swells, breaking waves and amazing barrel tubes created by truly awesome forces of nature. Unlike other travelers, surfers are interested in surfer-friendly places to crash, snagging the best airline rates for surfboards and where to hang out
It’s not quite Slumdog’s tale of rags to riches — more like shining maggots to Oscar gold. The path that led Japan to take its first Oscar in Best Foreign Language film at this week’s Academy Awards started with the film’s lead actor, Masahiro Motoki, contacting author Shinmon Aoki to quote a passage of his novel Coffinman: The Journal of a Buddhist Mortician in the actor’s own travel diary. “Maggots are life, too,” the passage, in the voice of the novel’s protagonist, reads
Sirens breaking the silence of the night, cars engulfed by meter-high flames. This is not a scene from the banlieues of Paris, but from the trendy Eastern Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, where in recent weeks an ongoing battle against gentrification has intensified.
A three-day auction of art and furnishings that belonged to the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent is seeing sale prices far exceeding estimates, with dollar amounts almost as spectacular as the range of items being sold. A list of artwork already sold in the Monday-to-Wednesday auction in Paris shows pieces from Matisse to Brancusi fetching tens of millions of dollars, according to the Web site of Christie’s, the auction house that is holding the sale. The largest amount so far was €35,905,000 ($45,264,579), the price realized for French Impressionist Henri Matisse’s painting “Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose.” That was more than double Christie’s estimate of €12 to 18 million ($15,526,268 and $23,289,403)
Following decades of debate over the nation’s wartime history, France’s highest judicial body has formally ruled that the French state bears moral and legal responsibility for the deportation of nearly 76,000 Jews during the nation’s WWII occupation. In doing so, the court officially recognized the willful participation of France’s collaborationist Vichy government in anti-Semitic persecution that had long been attributed to Nazi occupying powers. The ruling Monday, by the Conseil d’Etat, or State Council, was cheered by organizations representing French Jews and families of Jews who were deported during the war — a mere 3,000 of whom ultimately returned