AFP – Ousted Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein has been hanged inside one of his former torture centres in the final act of a brutal 30-year tragedy that left the stage strewn with tens of thousands of corpses.

AP – His enemies rejoiced, his defenders proclaimed him a martyr, and others looked ahead to the impact the Saturday execution of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would have on Iraq.

AFP – At least 31 people have been killed when a car bomb exploded in a fish market in the central Iraqi Shiite city of Kufa just hours after the execution of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

(RTTNews) – Meanwhile, the sterling saw mixed trading during Friday’s action against the yen. After drifting up in the first few hours, the cable slipped to a mark of 233.11. However, the British currency was able to gain back some of its losses and rose on into the afternoon.

(RTTNews) – Friday, the value of Chinese currency – RMB reached a record high against the U.S. dollar at 7.8087 yuan to a dollar, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trading Center in Shanghai.

miller60 writes “Telecommunications outages from Tuesday’s earthquake in near Taiwan have disrupted the market for virtual currency from MMORPGs, with market leader IGE and other major online sellers reporting inventory and delivery problems. The market for the real money trading of game assets is highly dependent upon suppliers operating ‘gold farms’ in China and other Asian countries. With …

(RTTNews) – Uncertainty dominated most of the dollar’s morning trading on Friday. However, the U.S. currency was able to drift slightly higher against the pound and yen. There was no economic news to drive trading.

(RTTNews) – The British Pound advanced smartly against Swiss franc during the Friday morning trade in New York. From a support of 2.3960 tested earlier, the British currency advanced steadily against its Swiss counterpart fetching measured gains and as of 2:54 am ET, was trading at 2.3982.

RBC, 29.12.2006, Moscow 10:05:38. The Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange will conduct no trading in the currency market section today on account of Christmas holidays today.

The last time global investors sat up and paid attention to the baht, Bill Clinton was in the White House and the Republicans were running Congress. The collapse of the Thai currency in July 1997 triggered a run on Asian markets that led to a biting recession in Asia and spread to Brazil and Russia.