London - Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is in line to benefit to the tune of 20 billion pounds (31 billion dollars) from a government bail-out programme, Tuesday unveiled more write- downs and signalled that it expected to make its first annual loss ever in 2008.

The beleaguered Edinburgh-based lender said bad debt charges and write-downs totalled 206 million pounds in the third quarter of 2008, in addition to 5.9 billion pounds in the first half of the year.

Amman- The Jordan Phosphates Mines Co., one of Jordan's two main mining firms, scored a nearly 600-per-cent increase in profits in the first nine months of the year, Chairman of the JPMC Board of Directors Walid Kurdi said Tuesday.

Kurdi put the firm's net profits in the first three quarters of the year at a record of 203.6 million dinars (288 million dollars), compared with 31.3 million dinars in the same period of 2007.

New Delhi, Nov 4 : The Co-Chairperson of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates lauded India’s initiatives on polio eradication here today.

He and his father William Gates Sr. called on Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss in New Delhi, today.

The senior members of the foundation met the Health Minister individually as well as in a Polio Round Table meeting.

During the meeting wide ranging issues from the health sector were discussed. Gates was apprised of strides made in key areas of Polio, National Rural Health Mission, Aids Control and Anti-tobacco efforts.

Nairobi, Goma  - It is a story that is as old as it is depressing: a rebel group more concerned with filling its pockets than the welfare of the people it says it is defending.

The rumbling conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which blew up into full-scale fighting for four days last week, conforms to this pattern.

Rebel Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda, who last week routed the Congolese army and sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing in terror, says he is fighting to defend Tutsis from armed Hutu militia.

These Hutu militia fled to Congo after the 1994 massacre in Rwanda, when Hutu militants killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the space of a few months.

Baghdad - A series of seven deadly bomb attacks Tuesday left 13 dead and more than 40 injured across the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

The deadliest of these attacks took place in the city's al-Mashatl neighbourhood in south-eastern Baghdad when a roadside bomb went off at a parking lot, killing seven and leaving 20 injured, a police source told Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

The source added that several parked vehicles were damaged in the blast.