Amman - The Arab Bank Group, one of the Arab world's largest banking establishments, managed to increase its net profits after tax by 8.4 per cent in 2008, to 840 million dollars, the group's chairman Abdul Hamid Shoman said Saturday.

"The figure represents the best results to be posted by the group since its establishment in 1930 despite the fluctuations in prices and production costs that were triggered by the global financial crisis" in the last quarter of 2008, he added.

Amman  - Arab stock markets are expected to be "relatively stable" in the coming weeks as ambiguity dominates the world's leading economies, financial analysts said Friday.

"We expect regional markets to be relatively stable in the coming couple of weeks as ambiguity characterizes world markets and plans taken by the US and other Western governments to handle the rampant recession," Nizar Taher, head of brokerage at the Jordan Ahli Bank, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Amman  - The Jordanian government said Wednesday it hoped to see the formation of a new Israeli government committed to the Middle East peace process and prepared to enter into "serious and fruitful" negotiations with the Palestinians.

In the first official reaction to the outcome of the Israeli general elections, Jordanian Foreign Minister Salah Bashir said that any new Israeli government "should also commit itself to the cessation of settlement activity and stop Judaizing East Jerusalem".

Amman  - The Jordanian government has ordered eight prominent members of the influential Muslim Brotherhood movement to stop delivering speeches at the state-run mosques on Fridays, the group's deputy leader Jamil Abu Bakr said Wednesday.

He called the ban, which was issued by the Minister of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs Abdul Fattah Salah, a backward step.

Amman - The Islamic Action Front (IAF), Jordan's largest political party, said Wednesday the outcome of the Israeli elections proved a drift towards "extremism and terrorism," and urged the world community to deal with this "dangerous" phenomenon.

"The polls demonstrated the Israeli society's drift to extremism and terrorism and a departure from the rules of the political game that prevailed in the region for a long time," IAF Secretary General Zaki Bani Ershaid told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

He referred mainly to the rise of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, which advocates the dismissal of all Arab citizens from Israel in favour of protecting the Jewish nature of the state.

Amman - Arab stock markets lost further ground this week as speculation dominated trading, and investors - obsessed with world recession fears - looked for fresh incentives, financial analysts said Friday.

They expected regional bourses to remain fragile in the coming weeks pending the adoption of the new stimulus package by the US administration of President Barack Obama and further news about the 2008 performance of listed firms.