Jijo Jacob

U.S. employment rose far less than expected in January, partly the result of severe snow storms that slammed large parts of the nation, but the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since April 2009.

When it comes to the size of corporates, most Americans are wary of giant-sized ones straddling continents and effectively controlling many a government.

The central bank of Indonesia predictably raised interest rates on Friday as inflation fears began to spook foreign investors out of the market.

As popular protests are bring down governments or seriously compromising rulers in the Middle East, one person looking at the turn of events uneasily is the Saudi Arabian King Abdullah.

Doha-based Al Jazeera television has reported that an Al-Arabiya correspondent in Egypt's Tahir square has been stabbed by pro-government mobs as clashes between factions raged in the Egyptian capital.

Employers in the U.S. announced plans to cut 38,519 jobs in January, according to the Challenger jobs data released on Wednesday. Compared to a year ago, however, last month’s job cuts were down sharply, falling 46 percent from the 71,482 job cuts recorded in January 2010.

Construction activity returned to growth in January, helped by better weather and a rise in new business, the monthly Markit/CIPS purchasing managers index showed on Wednesday.

Industrial producer prices in the eruozone surged 5.3 percent annually last year while the growth in the broader European Union was 5.9 percent, Eurostat data showed on Wednesday.

Russian ground control has received the first signal from the military satellite Geo-IK-2, deemed lost two hours after launch on Tuesday, the Itar-Tass news agency said on Wednesday.

NASA's Kepler space observatory has discovered more than 1,000 possible new planets outside the solar system, marking a watershed in the search for habitable alien planets.

Google Chrome continued its good run last year with a further market share gain in January, mopping up 10 percent of the market for global browser usage, according to data from analytics firm Net Applications. However, Chrome failed to beat Internet Explorer 8.0 in monthly market share gain in January.

Protesters assembled in Cairo's Tahir square are considering a march to the presidential palace, Al Jazeera reported from Cairo.

Israel has launched a diplomatic offensive as speculation intensified that the U.S. and European allies were ditching Egypt's beleaguered president Hosni Mubarak. Israel fears its decades-old peace with Egypt will crumble if Mubarak is replaced by a populist regime which by all means will be inimical to the Jewish state.

For the first time since the 1979 peace treaty, Israel has allowed Egyptian military into the demilitarized Sinai peninsula to help them confront protesters demanding the resignation of president Hosni Mubarak.

Manufacturing activity grew in January at its fastest pace since records began in 1992, and factory costs also surged, in a further sign that price pressures are building in the economy, a survey showed.

Egyptians are close to creating history as their Facebook-fuelled digital age revolution looks formidable for now and well on course to replacing a 30-year regime. The Facebook group called ‘the April 6 Movement’ has been the catalyst of the current political upheaval shaking up the government of Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's radical opposition group Muslim Brotherhood confirmed on Tuesday it will support the former IAEA director and opposition point man Mohammed ElBaradei in forming a national unity government.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's tottering regime is bracing for the toughest challenge yet as thousands of protesters demanding his ouster barreled towards main city centers on Tuesday as part of the planned March of a Million.

A huge asteroid the size of the Titanic has struck Jupiter, leaving a hole as large as the Pacific Ocean and causing temperatures to rise up to 4 Kelvin, scientists have confirmed. The July 2009 crash, which released the equivalent of five gigatons of TNT, had perplexed astronomers. But with the new findings, published in the journal Icarus, the mystery behind the huge scar on Jupiter is resolved.

China's trade surplus with its trading partners widened as much as 13 percent to $102.2 billion in the fourth quarter, according to the preliminary data released on Monday by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).

Inflation in the eurozone rose to 2.4 percent in January from 2.2. percent in December, according to the preliminary estimates of Eurostat, European Union's official statistics agency.

Japan's industrial output rose 3.1 percent in December, official data showed on Monday, suggesting the industrial sector took off on a strong note in the new year.

Has Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak given shoot-to-kill orders to the army in a desperate attempt to face down the swelling anti-government protests?

Iran's Press TV claimed on Monday Israel is giving weapons to Egypt to prop up the Hosni Mubarak regime which is engulfed in crisis and appearing to inch towards doom as violent popular protests gained momentum.

Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, who is accused of running a massive $7-billion Ponzi scheme, is incompetent to stand trial and must go to a rehabilitation center for addiction to pain medication, a U.S. judge in Houston has ruled. The following are key facts about the disgraced business magnate and a timeline of his legal battle:

Consumer confidence in the UK fell in January to the lowest level in two years, a survey showed on Friday.

South Africa's Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe said on Friday that hospitalized former president Nelson Mandela's health was improving and that there was no need to panic over his health, rubbishing speculation that the legendary leader was nearing his end.

New home sales in the U.S. in December climbed to 329,000 on annual basis, official data showed on Wednesday, suggesting that the housing market remained moderately robust despite an unsustainable unemployment rate and high foreclosures.

The Egyptian government should be responsive to its people's aspirations, the White House has said in measured but unusually strong comments about the raging anti-government protests in Egypt which forced the reported fleeing of the president’s son to Britain.