Quick Overview

• Barclays Global Investors announced last week it will file an application with the SEC to launch the first silver exchange-traded fund.
  
  

• Annual volume of cargo passing through China's ports every year is expected to rise by more than 50 percent in the next five years.

• Investors pushed Brazilian stocks down again Monday over concerns about a bribes-for-votes political scandal, adding to losses that sent the country's benchmark index plunging last week.
  

• China will not bow to international pressure to reform its tightly controlled currency regime any time soon and will base its policy on primarily on domestic considerations, Chinese officials and business leaders said on Monday.
  

• The USDA found another possible case of mad cow disease in the U.S.
  

• There is concern that Asian soy rust may have been spread north with Tropical Storm Arlene.
  

• The European Union struck a deal with China that limits China's exports of ten product categories through 2008. The deal may have relieved some of the concerns about an escalating trade war with China
  

• Fortis, predicted that global cocoa stocks will fall 18,000 tons in the 2005-2006 crop year.
  

• G-8 members agreed to write off $40 billion of debt owed by 18 African countries.
  
  

• Japan's economy grew slightly less than initially estimated in the first three months of 2005, and concern grew that the relatively brisk pace may not be sustained in the coming quarters.