Frankfurt - Hanover RE Group issued a profit warning Tuesday as the round of market turmoil and hurricanes undercut the world's fourth biggest reinsurer's earnings.

German-based Hanover said in a statement a sharp fall in equity prices and an above-average burden of catastrophe losses led to a decline in profit to 30 September.

With the capital market crisis intensifying as the year has unfolded, Hanover said its profit forecast for the full 2008 financial year was "no longer attainable".

Paris - Ministers and representatives from 18 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) began meeting in Paris on Tuesday to tackle international tax havens.

Convened by France and Germany, the participants will attempt to force tax havens to open their accounts to investigators looking for depositors who avoid paying taxes on their incomes.

The issue has been made more pressing because of the global finance crisis.

Pascal Saint-Amans, the OECD official in charge of the fight against tax havens, told the daily Le Figaro, "How can we pretend to rebuild a healthy financial system if we do not put an end to these dark pockets?"

London - It is the job of David Smith to keep on top of his box of index cards marked "serious buyers."

But as tight loans and tumbling prices keep a stranglehold on Britain's once buoyant property market, hardly any of his clients bother to ring back.

Estate agents like Smith are nostalgic about the days of the property boom when interested viewers would rush to compete for appointments to see the best properties as soon as they were advertised.

Britain's obsession with home ownership in a market distorted and overheated by a drastic disproportion between supply and demand has come to a sudden stop with the credit crunch.

Sydney - Kevin Rudd needed something to give his poll ratings pep and it came in the ghastly form of a stock market meltdown that wilted the pension plans of millions of Australians.

Now, the approval ratings of the 50-year-old former diplomat, a year into his first spell as prime minister, suggest he could walk on water.

"It puts him into the 70-per-cent range and only one other prime minister has done that," said pollster John Stirton, noting that only Bob Hawke, 36 years ago, was a more popular prime minister.

People tend to rally round their leader in a crisis. It's happened to Britain's Gordon Brown. For Rudd, as for Brown, the acclamation is particularly pleasing.

Tokyo - Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso on Tuesday welcomed US efforts to stabilize the global financial markets and conveyed his intention to play a leading role as Group of Eight chair in the upcoming financial crisis meeting in the US, the top Japanese government spokesman said.