Business news for Mon, 17 Dec 2007 & with word official. 9 news.

CHINA International Capital Corp, the country's first joint-venture investment bank, has acquired a US$5 billion quota under the qualified domestic institutional investor scheme, a senior foreign exchange management official said. Sun Lujun, deputy head of the capital project department under the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said by early December, the forex market regulator had verified a total of US$23 billion as QDII quotas for China Southern Fund, Huaxia Fund, Harvest Fund and China International Fund. Sun said that through the end of October, 16 QDIIs had put on the market 154 QDII products. Sun added that US$28.6 billion were actually remitted abroad for QDII operations by the end of the month. The total indicates that capital flows accelerated sharply over the past few months as only US$4 billion or so were remitted between April 2006 and March 2007. In May, QDII banks were approved to invest in Hong Kong stocks.

THE United States' refusal to comply with a World Trade Organization decision on online gambling is threatening to undermine the entire set of rules binding the international trade system. The WTO is to decide soon on a demand from the tropical nation of Antigua and Barbuda for US$3.4 billion in annual compensation from the US, whose law banning Americans from betting on Internet gaming sites was first ruled illegal by the WTO in 2004. The implications of the case go far beyond Antigua, a nation of 69,000. That's because, instead of rewriting its gambling laws, the US rewrote its trade rules to remove the issue from the WTO's jurisdiction. The prospect that other nations may take a similar tack if cases don't go their way has spooked the international trade community. "This is by far the most significant WTO case ever," says Naotaka Matsukata, a policy adviser in Washington with Alston + Bird LLP and a former US trade official. Meanwhile, Antigua, which has

NEW YORK - Oil prices fell Monday when an OPEC official said the cartel may increase production, calming concerns about tight supplies.

A former Riverside city official started Monday as president of Wyandotte Development Inc., the marketing organization for Wyandotte County.

His appointment will be effective from the date he assumes charge of his office, an official statement said on Monday. An Indian Administrative Service officer of Kerala cadre, 1972 batch, Rai will take over from V N Kaul.

Russia said it had delivered the first shipment of nuclear fuel to Iran's Bushehr nuclear power station but a senior Iranian official rejected Moscow's call for Tehran to drop its own enrichment programme

The titles are grim: "His Days Are Numbered," "The End is Near," and "The Official Countdown." But these are not your ordinary apocalyptic tales lining the shelves at area bookstores. Instead, they are calendars, many, many calendars, counting down the days until the end of the Bush administration.

Official sector monetary economists, particularly the Federal Reserve's, just can't bring themselves to admit that their models are broken, writes John Dizard

The City of London police action is the result of growing official concern about the impact of 'boiler room' share scams that cost British investors at least ?150m a year