Bloodbath at Tel Aviv Stock Exchange as TA-25 plummets 11%
By Natan Sheva, The Marker and Reuters

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange was the scene of carnage on Thursday as its major indices crashed amid plummeting worldwide stocks.

Trading was stopped Thursday afternoon shortly after the TA-25 plummeted by 11 percent, falling to a level of 630 points.

The TA-100 also registered sharp losses, dropping by 12 percent to 552 points. The Tel-Tech shed eight percent. Turnover was at NIS 1.2 billion.


Meanwhile, European shares extended losses in afternoon trade on Thursday, trading 5.5 percent lower as banks and oil shares tumbled and Wall Street slid in early trade in the United States.

At 15:11 GMT the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index was down 5.5 percent at 767.62 points.

Oil shares led the decline, with BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total shedding between 5.7 and 6.8 percent as crude plunged 7 percent to below e50 a barrel.

Among major banks, HSBC lost 3.8 percent, Credit Suisse dropped 11 percent and Barclays shed 5.9 percent.

Major U.S. stock indexes fell between 2.5 and 3.4 percent as investors worried that failure by automakers to get a government bailout would add to the economy's woes, fears heightened by news of labor market deterioration.
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Israel, under fire by UN, says it will boycott human rights conference 22 minutes ago By The Associated PressJERUSALEM - Israel's foreign minister says the government will boycott a United Nations conference on human rights next year. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni says the World Conference Against Racism is biased against Israel and is little more than a forum that aims to delegitimize the Jewish state. The meeting is scheduled to take place next April in Geneva. Livni announced the planned boycott Wednesday at a conference of North American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. The announcement came a day after the UN's top human rights official called on Israel to end its blockade of the Gaza Strip, saying the siege breached humanitarian law. The UN conference is a follow up to a meeting held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa.http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/081119/world/israel_un_conference