Jijo Jacob

The documents leaked by WikiLeaks late on Sunday showed the state department ordered a surveillance of the activities of the United Nations personnel including the secretary general and asked its agencies to collect exhaustive information on the U.N staff, including personal details.

The U.S. Department of State is working overtime sending messages to ally capitals warning the impending release of classified documents by WikiLeaks could harm relations in what is seen as a pre-emptive move of unprecedented scale to neutralize the impact of the unveiling of embarrassing and compromising details about the inner workings of the government apparatus.

South Korea's defense minister Kim Tae-young resigned late on Thursday as criticism mounted over the government's response to the North Korean shelling on a dispute island which killed four people.

The fall in initial jobless claims in the U.S. to the lowest level since July 2008 is not a right pointer to a possible labor market recovery, according to an analyst, who says the true test for the economy is the creation of anything above 200,000 payroll jobs in a month.

Personal spending in the U.S. rose 0.4 percent in October, marking a slight uptick in households' appetite for purchases even as a holiday season is kicking in.

Shares of Irish banks nosedived on Wednesday driven by fears of a bank run as speculation intensified over government stake hike in the Bank of Ireland and the Allied Irish Banks, even as Dublin was putting final touches to the austerity plan the country was ordered to follow as part of its 85 billion euro bailout announced early this week.

Japanese Trade Minister Akihiro Ohata confirmed on Wednesday Chinese shipments of rare earths to his country resumed two months after Beijing halted exports following the breakout of a boundary row.

It's nothing short of a bizarre twist to one of the most polarizing debates in the U.S. in recent times. The developer of the 'Ground Zero Mosque,' which triggered angry protests from Americans, has requested federal aid for the project, and if his request is granted, money to fund the mosque could come from a federal program intended for the reconstruction of the area hit by the 9/11 attacks.

Rare earth elements are not exactly rarefied minerals, but the rest of the world played into China's hands by going easy on their exploration and production as environmental priorities complicated a game they were already losing to China on the labor cost front.

New York City could axe as many as 6,000 teachers working in its public schools and slash its budget by $350 million as part of belt tightening, an employment consultancy said in a release on Monday. Education experts have warned that teacher layoffs in New York City, which has not laid off teachers since 1976, will impact schools adversely by causing increase in the class sizes.

An unwilling Ireland finally agreed to a bailout to help prolong eurozone's jolly ride to doom, and analysts see a good chance of Portugal following suit in the coming months. However, the bigger question is if Spain, eurozone's fourth largest economy, is well insulated against a Greece- and Ireland-style crisis.

The nation that once gloated over its ability to feed the entire world is seeing an explosion of poverty: The number of people surviving on food stamps is rising as biting unemployment refuses to abate, personal incomes have been falling while the debt bubble is inflating with each passing day and, in a more startling representation of the grim reality, tent cities are mushrooming as more and more people are pushed out of their ‘underwater’ homes.

An Agricultural commodity price rally in the U.S. will help the wobbly recovery in three ways - by boosting inflation a tad and narrowing the worrying trade deficit by a whisker, while not hardening enough to snuff out the fledgling recovery.

As comments from Dublin and Brussels strongly hint at the possibility of Ireland formally seeking international financial support sooner or later, analysts are mulling the chances of a possible bailout of the stricken Celtic Tiger by the robust Chinese Dragon.

The Greek government submitted a revised 2011 budget to the Parliament on Thursday, pledging to prune deficit to 7.4 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), ensuring substantial bailout fund will flow without hiccups from the IMF and the ECB.However, desperate measures to squeeze through the tough austerity net might still not keep the threat of an eventual debt restructuring out of the door, analysts have said.

A meeting between President Barack Obama and Congressional representatives originally scheduled to be held on Thursday has been postponed until Nov. 30, the White House said on Wednesday, signaling consensus on the extension of Bush-era tax cuts eluded leaders at the Capitol.

Ireland is open to talks with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a bailout program for its failed banks, EU Economics and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said after a Tuesday night meeting of eurozone finance ministers and officials in Brussels.

Taking home less in benefits was the fitting catharsis for the bankers whose hubris was a generous sanctioning of risky loans, it was agreed. And it made everyone, except the bankers, happy. But the there is a twist in the tale.

Storied Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who faces trial in the U.S. for plotting to kill Americans by making weapons available to terror outfits, was extradited to the U.S. on Tuesday, almost three months after a Thai court overturned his plea contesting an earlier extradition verdict.

The Bank of Korea raised a key policy rate by 25 basis points as the central bank's focus shifted from unchecked inflows of foreign funds to rising inflation.

Google has donned the cloak of Internet's guardian angel once again, condemning the 'digital disruptions' that some governments unleash and calling for new trade rules to prevent countries from setting up intractable 'trade barriers' of a new kind.

President Barack Obama's 10-day Asian tour has been dubbed a failure by media owing to key failures in binding together the much-awaited free trade pact with South Korea and the inability to persuade a majority of the G-20 nations to support the U.S. position on current account imbalances.

Debt-stricken Greece announced on Monday its budget deficit will contract to 9.4 percent of the GDP this year and said the country has been able to manage a much greater pruning of its deficit than initially calculated, immediately after the European Union Statistical agency revised upwards the country's 2009 deficit to 15. 4 percent.

Facebook's very own web-based email has been a slithery sensation in the back of Google's mind ever since rumors about the 'Project Titan' started doing the rounds. Now it looks like the chimera is closer in the backyard and the sound of dead leaves and twigs getting crushed under its feet is more audible than ever.

Japan will start free trade talks with the European Union next spring, alarmed by the head start made by its main manufacturing rival in Asia, South Korea, which signed a pact with the European bloc last month.

Ireland's grip on the slippery debt-mired track is giving way fast as bond yields widened to a level with Greece’s before Athens went broke and was bailed out, fueling speculation that the country could be soon looking for international financial assistance.

According to reports in tech websites, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 handsets sold 40,000 units on Monday, the day they were launched in the U.S.

The U.S.-South Korea free trade talks broke down as the two sides failed to resolve principal differences over U.S. beef and auto exports to South Korean markets, but Presidents Barack Obama and Lee Myung-bak said they still hoped the deal could be clinched.

Media reports about a Chinese clampdown on rare earths shipments to Japan and the EU will, in all likelihood, permanently alter the global rare earths logistics scenario.