POLITICS & POLICY

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is in the headlines again, this time for its Wednesday announcement of a $1.6 billion quarterly loss in its fiscal fourth quarter following the writedown of its global publishing empire.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: The AUD had a relatively quiet offshore session last night and remains relatively range bound this morning.

China has formally unveiled on Wednesday a physical trading platform for rare earth metals.

The shortage of skilled manpower in Australia's iron ore sector has been seen to improve.

India's largest power producer, NTPC Ltd., (NTPC), will be carrying this month an international $1 billion bond sale to help support the company's capacity expansion plans in light of the electricity crisis that hit country last week.

Global output of diamonds declined in 2011 on aging mines and struggling demand brought by the continuing debilitating fiscal crisis in the eurozone.

The Australian Treasury painted on Wednesday a robust local banking industry that has spawned profitable settings more players and therefore further inflow of investments.

In order to effectively cutback on their power generation outlays, state governments would do well to subscribe to the federal energy retail law, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said on Wednesday.

Prices of coal used for making steel has been forecast to further slide and could hit rock bottom to its lowest price in two years, as global steel output slows down spurred by the deepening debt crisis in the Eurozone.

China, in a bid to regulate its disorderly rare earths industry, has issued a production limit guideline for its producers.

The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index topped 1400 for the first time in three months after a Federal Reserve official called for additional central bank stimulus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 51.09 points, or 0.4%, to 13168.60, rising for a third consecutive session.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: The Australian Dollar is lower this morning, currently trading around USD1.0550, after mixed data from both sides of the Atlantic failed to provide any real direction during the offshore trading session.

Besides the carbon tax and Australian states, another scapegoat - or scapedog - was blamed for the rise in electricity bills of some homeowners. Ergon Energy is blaming pet dogs for failure of the utility firm's employees to read some electric meters.

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan may have spooked the uranium mining sector, forcing even some nations to forego nuclear programs in light of its effectiveness, safety and efficiency, but these factors will not permanently kill nuclear power.

The high cost of electricity in Australia was mainly due to state governments’ move of generating revenues from power generators, which according to Prime Minister Julia Gillard were operating burdens eventually shouldered by consumers.

Chinese employees working for publicly-traded companies may now have the option to receive their take home pay in the form of stock options from the shares of their companies as the federal government mulls to reinvent the country's overall wage structure to help lift investor confidence in the local stock market.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: The AUD is relatively unchanged this morning, currently trading at USD1.0560, ahead of the RBA's interest rate meeting today.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard sought on Tuesday an overhaul of Australia's electricity supply market amid observations of the swift rise in power prices which states and the Opposition blame on the one-month old carbon tax.

The failure by the timber industry and environmental groups to reach an agreement on Monday would result in the Tasmanian government stepping in to resolve the impasse. The battle over the largest temperate rainforest in the region has extended to mining in the Tarkine wilderness.

For the fourth month in a row, Australia's labour sector notices and advertisements in newspapers and on the Internet continued to decelerate.

The Philippine government has suspended the operations of its largest gold mine, the Padcal facility, following last week's waste spillage.

World prices of commodities will continue to be dependent on China's economic growth, regardless whether its economy is a slowed down or not.

Judging from the number of Chinese investments that have been sealed this year, Australia it seems had ceased to be China's favorite mining destination.

The Liberals in Canberra promised to repeal the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) ban on free plastic bags if they grab the territory's political leadership after the October ACT polls. The position is a U-turn from the previous stand taken by the Libs in 2004.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has accused the Gillard Government of attempting to silence a critical media simply because it could not handle harsh words that highlighted what he claimed as failed policies of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Economists forecast lesser chances of another overnight cash rate cut by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) when it sits down on Tuesday for its regular monetary board policy rate meeting.

The Tasmanian government heeds the signs of the time on efforts to legalise gay marriage in the state, according to Premier Lara Giddings, who on Saturday described her administration’s support for the proposed laws as “a very proud moment for all of us.”

It is likely that Australia will experience yet again the weather phenomenon El Niño in the coming months.

Leading Cairns figures lauded the federal government for picking out the Queensland city as the official site to host the G20 finance ministers gathering in 2014, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard expressing confidence that she made the right choice.