Struggling airline Qantas has said it will cut 5,000 jobs, after reporting a heavy financial loss.

Nigeria has granted licenses to more than 30 companies to import around 26 million barrels of gasoline, or around 3.1 million tonnes, in the first quarter of this year, down slightly from the previous quarter, industry sources said.

Nigeria gave the largest allocation of 1.3 million tonnes to state oil company NNPC, according to a list of importers compiled from trade sources by Reuters.

Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer but relies on gasoline imports because its refineries work at a fraction of capacity due to poor maintenance and old age.

Africa’s most populous nation and the continent’s second largest economy is an

Qantas to cut 5,000 jobs in A$2bn cost-cutting move

Struggling airline Qantas has said it will cut 5,000 jobs, after reporting a heavy financial loss.

It is part of the Australian carrier's plans to reduce costs by A$2bn ($1.8bn; £1bn) over the next three years.

The cuts were announced alongside an underlying pre-tax loss of A$252m for the six months to the end of December.

The airline, which also plans to reduce its fleet by more than 50 aircraft, said it faced tough competition in both international and domestic operations.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said he would be discussing the job cuts

crude-for-product swap deal

Danish toymaker Lego's profits rose 9% to 6.12 bn kroner ($1.12bn; £673m) in 2013 as the firm expands beyond its signature building blocks.

Rising sales were helped by increasing demand from China, which Lego highlighted as a future "core market".

The privately-held firm, which only reports profits annually, also said it hired 1,355 workers.

Profits from the hugely successful Lego movie were not included.

Lego is the world's second largest toymaker, behind Mattel, the maker of Barbie.

Lego's profits have been slowing recently as

Successful executives and the four-hour sleep myth

For Gregory McKee, getting a good night’s sleep is as important as eating right and exercising regularly. If he doesn’t get eight hours of shuteye, the founder and managing director of La Jolla, California-based STS Capital Partners will have trouble functioning the next day.

Seven or more hours' sleep a night boosts the benefits to the heart of a healthy lifestyle, research suggests.

Two months ago, McKee took an overnight flight across the country for a meeting. He barely slept. By mid-afternoon he was disengaged and he kept leaving the room to get more coffee and soda. He couldn’t make out a word of his sleep-deprived notes when

Selling Mandela: From t-shirts to TV shows, how Madiba became a brand

He has not formally appeared in public for years, and recently he's been battling illness inside a Pretoria hospital. But former South African president Nelson Mandela is still a beloved icon across the world, an international symbol of courage, strength and hope.

The 95-year-old Nobel laureate is also one of the world's most recognizable figures. More than just a man, he has become a global brand -- one that's estimated to be worth millions of dollars. Ever since Mandela was released from prison, where he had endured 27 years for fighting apartheid, many South Africans have felt like they'd like to "own" a little piece of him.

As a result, the smiling image of Madiba, as

Would you have surgery at hands of a robot?

 Every day, we happily entrust more of our lives to automated machines at home and in our cities. But you could be forgiven for blanching at the prospect of a four-armed robot bearing over you, scalpel glinting.

But fear not, a human, and a highly-trained one at that, is at the controls of the da Vinci robotic surgical system.

"I think it's very important to explain robotic surgery," says David Rosa from da Vinci creators, Intuitive Surgical.

"The robot doesn't do anything on its own. Every movement, all of its controls are controlled by a surgeon who sits at a console."

The company's tele-operated robots have performed more than

Benefits of cooperative societies to the individual

The first thing cooperative societies do to individual members is development of  savings culture. It is an age long established fact that nobody can escape poverty without a savings habit. Anybody that spends everything on consumption is just a step away from poverty and its various consequences, no matter how rich the person is today. The story of the prodigal son is instructive in this regard. Savings culture means, irrespective of how much you earn today, and your needs, you put something aside for tomorrow, or invest, to make additional income. This, however, is a great challenge for many people, especially for low income people, whose needs are far more than what they earn. Some of them attempt to save, but because the saving is always within their reach, they find it difficult not to spend the money. Yet,

Let insurance carry your risk

Insurance is the transfer of risk from people & corporate institutions to professional risk carriers, bearers – the insurance companies. Every one of us is exposed to one risk or the other because life is full of risks and all these risks can be identified, quantified and handled by insurance transfer mechanism. So when risks materialise, they lead to financial losses, and if risks are not managed in a scientific manner, it could ruin anybody, any business, any nation, and any economy. That is why all over the world people have come to

Where do good development ideas come from?

Where do good development ideas come from? This is an important question for the health of the global economy. As a former student of international development studies, my colleagues and I spent a great deal of time trying to understand how to formulate good development policies, the pitfalls to avoid and the unintended consequences of not knowing the local conditions and circumstances that lead to policy failure. The humility required of an economist or a development expert is

Communications and Impact Metrics for Think Tanks

Based on a presentation made at the conference “Think Tanks – Facing the Changing World,” hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, June 17-18, 2013.

Today, many of the world’s 5,500 think tanks are seeking more effective ways to communicate, to increase their impact – and exploring better ways to measure that impact.

My views on these tasks are shaped by 35 years in communications, including in newspapers and news websites, as well as my work these past three years with an independent, non-partisan global think tank, The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

For any organization, including think tanks, good communications begin with

No accurate data on port facilities in Nigeria – Report

There are indications that Nigeria does not have accurate report on the number of port facilities that currently exit  in the country. The United States Coast Guard  report on Nigeria’s compliance with the International Ship and Ports Facility Security (ISPS) Code noted that Nigeria as a contracting government to the convention does not know the total number of facilities where the code applies. According to the report, Nigeria has not been able to set security levels for its port facilities due to the fact that it does not know the number of these facilities. The report read in part “It is unclear as to whether the contracting government is aware of the

No indicted marketer can import fuel – PPPRA

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency has dismissed reports published on Tuesday by Reuters that indicted marketers were listed among the 40 companies that got allocations for the importation of petrol into the country for the third quarter of the year. The Executive Secretary, PPPRA, Mr. Reginald Stanley, who spoke with journalists on Wednesday, described the report as “misleading and grossly wrong.” He explained that no company indicted for the subsidy fraud as reported by Reuters was included in the latest list of importers. Stanley said, “No company that was indicted in the subsidy claims report