Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday that the current U.S. economic downturn is "likely temporary."

The Russian economy will grow by 6.5 percent both this year and next, the International Monetary Fund predicted Monday in an annual report.

Chinese coal mine developers will soon have to pay for the right to prospect and mine in eight coal-rich provinces, whose combined coal resources make up over 70 percent of the country's total.

The euro zone industrial producer price index fell by 0.5 percent in September 2006 compared with August 2006, said Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union (EU), on Monday.

In a move into the old-fashioned business of ink on paper, Google is going to start selling advertisements that will appear in the print editions of 50 major newspapers, The New York Times reported on Monday.

U.S. antitrust regulators has cleared Google Inc.'s 1.65 billion dollar purchase of online video- sharing company YouTube Inc., The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

World oil prices rose on Monday amid supply concern of Nigeria.

Two of China's largest air carriers, Air China and Shanghai Airlines, are expected to join the Star Alliance, the global network of passenger airlines next year.

A seminar on intellectual property rights (IPR) protection opened here on Monday, which aims at strengthening IPR protection effort in China's State-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The gold price in Hong Kong went up 2 HK dollars to 5,771 HK dollars per tael on Monday, according to Bank of China (Hong Kong).