e Yugoslavia

Tokyo - Japan’s Panasonic Corp is considering buying troubled Sanyo Electric Co to become the nation’s largest electronics manufacturer, news reports said Saturday.

Moscow - The splurge of oil profits feeding Russia’s years of growth has turned sticky with falling production and energy prices.

Washington - The United States late Friday confirmed that Libya has paid 1.5 billion dollars into a US-controlled account to compensate US victims of a 1988 terrorist attack and other attacks, saying the step had removed “the last obstacle to a normal relationship between the United States and Libya.”

Sydney - A Democrat in the White House after next week’s presidential election could usher in a round of protectionism that would do further damage to the world economy, media baron Rupert Murdoch warned Saturday.

Berlin - Berlin is locked in art fever, with four powerful exhibitions going ahead including work by Jeff Koons and Paul Klee.

Bremen - The Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) is worried about God’s creation. At its synod in the northern city of Bremen from Sunday to Wednesday, its most important meeting of the year, the main theme will be global warming and dwindling water resources.

Washington - Studs Terkel, the writer, radio-TV personality and social activist who, like Democratic presidential candidate, made Chicago his hometown, was dead at age 96, the Chicago Tribune reported late Friday.

Washington - Every day, Sarah Harridson, 26, wears a picture of her idol very close to her heart, as a badge. Sometimes it is small, sometimes it is big, sometimes it is colourful and other times it shows the initials of the man in question, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, 47.

New York - Wall Street stock indices closed higher on Friday, ending one of the best weeks in three decades, as banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co moved to tackle the housing crisis at the centre of the economic downturn in the United States.