COMMODITIES

French Queen Marie Antoinette -- who historically bears the brunt of having uttered the four words, summing up the obliviousness of the French monarchy to the poverty of the peasants, prior to the French revolution -- may have found her modern day avatar in the Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad. Upon learning that her subjects had no bread to eat during the famine that occurred in France due to the mismanagement of treasury, Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI of France, famously remarked: Let them ...

In Sweden, monetary transactions made with physical cash are down to three percent of the national economy... and the rest of the world may be closer to cashless than you think.

When the late Steve Jobs had a will, he often got his way. That's why Apple hasn't paid a dividend since 2005.

CEO Tim Cook decided on a new course for the Cupertino, Calif., company regarding shareholders. We have plenty of cash to run our business, he said.

Scientists in recent years have attempted to identify the factors behind the increasing numbers of honeybee deaths in North America and Europe -- and new research has found the use of a specific class of insecticides in cornfields may be responsible.

You can't blame investors for feeling a bit squeamish regarding deploying new money in the U.S. stock market these days, despite the Dow Jones Industrial Average's (DJIA) recent rise to 13,000. Where's the Dow headed in the next three months?

India's budget proposal for 2012, although containing a few welcomed provisions, failed to convince the world that the ruling Indian National Congress party will make meaningful policy changes to tackle the country's structural problems.

The Violence Against Women Act is at the center of an explosive debate in Congress this week. The bill has been authorized twice since its introduction in 1994, but this time Republicans are putting up a fight. Either way, things are looking up for Senate Democrats.

With massive debts to repay, Dublin was compelled to accept huge bailouts from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Given the lack of sufficient infrastructure and endless political instability, Sudan’s energy sector faces many monumental challenges.

Is George Clooney’s satellite monitoring of Sudan ethical?

Bo Xilai has been sacked from his position as the Communist Party Chief of Chongqing. The state-owned Xinhua News Agency’s coverage of the event was brief and unceremonious, belying its critical significance.

On the heels of Dwight Howard's decision to stay in Orlando just a few hours before the 2012 NBA trade deadline, a flurry of teams made deals, including some within the 11th hour, to shake things up.

Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO), the No. 1 provider of Internet gear, said it plans to acquire NDS of the UK in a move to bolster its growing presence in media communications.

Shares of Citigroup (NYSE: C) fell more than 4 percent Wednesday after the Federal Reserve said the No. 3 U.S. bank flunked a “stress test” of its financial viability.

Von Trotha's threat to wipe out an entire people would be echoed a few decades later by Hitler.

Facebook filed for an IPO on Feb. 1 but has since amended its registration document twice. Here are four important things to know about the world's biggest social media company.

Amin cited that the Ugandan Indian community had exploited the local economy and refused to integrate with the African people after a century in the country.

As Russia prepares to join the World Trade Organization his summer, the U.S. Congress is under increasing pressure to repeal a Soviet-era trade restriction called the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. But some senators don’t want to repeal the sanctions just yet--at least, not without applying certain conditions.

For the first time since his arrest in 2009, Iran has admitted publically that Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has been convicted of religious crimes.

The multi-billion dollar Iron Dome missile defense system managed to intercept a significant portion of short-range rockets fired into Israel, restraining public opinion and buying Israel's leaders time to effect a climbdown.

Obama's approval rating has fallen to a record low of 41 percent. What does this mean for the general election? The numbers tell a complicated story.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord has once again come under media and military scrutiny after a rogue soldier from that base murdered 16 civilians in southern Afghanistan on Sunday. With some of the most notorious cases in recent military history all centered on this base and its veterans, officials would do well to look closer at what really goes on inside the military base.

The case of the girls who drowned in Zhangzhou is an odd one since time travel seems such a trivial topic -- not worthy of state media efforts to spin tragedy into propaganda.

Linsanity has officially ended.

Top-tier technology companies including Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT), among others, all buy back shares. Qualcomm and Applied Materials have just refreshed their buyback programs and hiked their dividends, too.

Shares of IBM set a new high of $201.57 after new CEO Virginia Rometty said the No. 2 computer services company was “uniquely positioned” to deliver benefits of “a gusher of data” flowing into the global economy.

Black economic empowerment laws call for the transfer of about 25 percent of mining equity to black South Africans

It was not until 2004 (a century after the massacre) that Germany formally apologized for the atrocity