AUSTRALIAN shares are expected to be weaker when the market opens this morning after another skittish session in the US.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 64.9 points - or 0.5 per cent - to close at 12,182.1 on Friday night while the ASX/S&P500 closed 5.6 points down to 1331.3. With little economic news to digest, investors turned skittish as they reacted to the US Congress approving the new economic stimulus plan worth $US150 billion ($167.6 billion).

Probe: Soc Gen trader had no accomplice

Investigators of a $7 billion fraud at French bank Societe Generale say that the only trader implicated in the scandal acted alone.

"At this stage of the investigations, there is no evidence of embezzlement or internal or external complicity," according to a report by a committee charged with investigating the losses.

Hope for the riot victims of Gujarat

Otherwise, no matter how many times President Bush travels to the region, there is no reason to believe that 2008 will offer anything other than the macabre pattern of years past.

Hussein Agha, a senior associate member of St. Antony's College, Oxford University, has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian affairs for four decades. Robert Malley is Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group and was special assistant to the president for Arab-Israeli affairs from 1998 to 2001.

By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post .

Hedge-fund managers, lords of lucre

There was John Arnold, then 33, who correctly judged that natural gas prices would go down, not up. And the mathematician Jim Simons, 69, whose fees, at 44% of investors’ profits, mean that he, too, was near nine zeroes sterling. The oil speculator

T Boone Pickens, 79, took home half a billion. London’s big hitter is Noam Gottesman, 46, one of the three founders of GLG Partners, whose 2006 income is estimated at £225m. The year just ended will have been more rewarding for him, as a stake in GLG was floated on the New York stock exchange, giving him another half a billion. But all of this is misleading. Because, as with other sorts of people, hedgies seem not to fit the stereotype when you get up close. John Paulson, the name on 2007’s billion-pound cheque, has a quiet manner, sombre suits and understated offices, and he keeps his feet under the desk.

NCEL launches awareness drive for rice trading

KARACHI: National Commodities Exchange Limited (NCEL) on Monday launched a month-long pre-launch programme and investor awareness drive ahead of the commencement of listing and trading of its IRRI-6 Rice Futures Contract.

Managing Director Assim Jang said NCEL will be in Kandhkot, in upper Sindh, holding the first of investor awareness seminars aimed at informing the potential participants, including growers, millers, traders and exporters of the details of Futures Trading in IRRI-6 rice and encouraging their participation.

We have chosen these areas to start out investor awareness drive as they are the trading hubs of IRRI-6 rice, Assim said adding, we feel it is important to reach out to the key participants in our market on a one-to-one basis, they will not only ultimately benefit from this new contract, but also will provide NCEL with the necessary depth and liquidity, he added.

Dodd: Some players let the fans down

We're not being alarmistic just facing the facts. We have no manager,no money, no passion in the players and a board that lead us to put our faith in them and now aren't putting their faith in us...we deserve more than this! And why shoud we be calling for managers such as Dowie? Sacked twice in the past 14 months? Why aim so low all the time? I know money is tight but surely paying out for a manager that can get results will generate more money for the club than getting someone on the cheap to not improve what we already have?! We once were a big club that any manager would have liked to have been involved with but times are certainly are certainly changing at St Marys!! .