Geneva - The Swiss set a new record for themselves, exporting in 2008 some 17 billion francs' (14.7 billion dollars) billion francs) worth of watches, a report released Tuesday said.

While this was an increase of over 6 per cent compared to 2007, the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry warned that the final months of last year saw a 7.8 per cent decline in exports, as the financial crisis began to be felt across the real economy.

This year, the association said, will begin in the red, continuing the trend, though the highest end timepieces were holding steady through the initial phases of the crisis.

Geneva -The United Nations opened its fourth session of the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva on Monday, which will see 16 countries over the next two weeks have their rights records checked and critiqued.

The UN's Human Rights Council, established in 2006, set up a process so that each member state of the international organ will be reviewed once every four years on its human rights policies.

Governments, including of the country in question, the UN and non-governmental groups provide their take on each state's record, and then a body of the Council issues a report with its recommendations.

According to Bloomberg news service, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, had Abode CEO Shantanu Narayen talking to reporters about Abode working with Apple, for developing a Flash version to run on the iPhone. Narayen also added that it is no mean task – and, the company has been striving for months!

Narayen told Bloomberg that the project was “a hard technical challenge,” and the responsibility on Abode is “to deliver.”

Davos, Switzerland  - The World Economic Forum will launch in the upcoming weeks an initiative to focus on reshaping the global financial systems, its founder Klaus Schwab announced Sunday in the closing hours of this year's Davos meeting.

"We will start a Global Redesign Initiative in next few weeks," Schwab said in an impromptu statement.

"It has the support of almost every political leader who was here" at Davos in the past five days, said Schwab, naming specifically UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as backers.

He said the upcoming meeting in April of the Group of 20 industrialized economies (G20) would not be enough to solve the global economic crisis.

Davos, Switzerland  - World leaders spoke out against protectionism in their speeches at Davos, warning that putting restraints on trade would only worsen and prolong the global economic crisis.

But there were few signs that a sideline meeting Saturday of trade ministers from about 20 countries had managed to push ahead the long-stalled Doha Round of trade talks, meant to create freer markets.

"Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not right," said World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy. "Trade is not the cause of crisis."

Switzerland - In his address to the  World Economic Forum Saturday, Japan's Taro Aso said his country was ready to provide 17 billion dollars in development assistance to Asian countries.

"It is Asia that holds the greatest potential anywhere in the world," said the prime minister, noting that 40 per cent of world's population resides there and the region has an economic growth rate of about 4 per cent.