The Irish Independent reports that ten-year fixed interest rates approached 4pc yesterday as a new survey predicted that German consumer sentiment will jump to its highest for nearly five years in June.

The Irish Independent also reports that Ballmore Properties has threatened legal action for "trespassing" against a Hungarian property firm, Polus Holdings, controlled by colourful local businessman Sandor Demjan, which has taken control of an eight-hectare site from it in Budapest.

The Irish Times reports that intensive efforts to break the deadlock in the national pay talks are to resume today after the parties failed again last night to make significant progress.

There remains a wide gap between unions and employers over key issues such as basic pay increases and the duration of any new deal.

Tonight will provide the last opportunity for the sides to agree a deal before Taoiseach Bertie Ahern departs for New York for a speaking engagement at the United Nations.

Mr Ahern is due to address a UN conference on aid and leaves Dublin tomorrow morning. He has also said there will be no talks over the June bank holiday weekend.

He warned yesterday that time to secure an agreement was running out. "There comes a time, and I think we're very close to it, when people have to decide whether they want to do a deal or not," he said.

The parties have been trying to agree a pay deal of between two and three years' duration, which would form part of an overall 10-year social partnership programme.

Unions favour a shorter deal and want pay increases of at least 5 per cent per annum, whereas employers would prefer a three-year agreement involving increases in "low single figures".

While the employers' body, Ibec, has indicated a willingness to slightly modify its demand for a three-year deal, there remains a big gap between the sides on this matter alone.

Department of the Taoiseach secretary general Dermot McCarthy was in contact with both Ibec and Ictu leaders yesterday in an attempt to find some common ground.

The two sides later called to Government Buildings for separate discussions with Mr McCarthy, but there were no direct negotiations.

Arriving for a meeting with Mr McCarthy, Ictu president Peter McLoone echoed Mr Ahern's concern that time was running out in the talks.

If the parties failed to achieve a deal last night, he said, hopes for an agreement would rapidly begin to disappear.

Ibec director general Turlough O'Sullivan, speaking as he left Government Buildings at about 7.30pm, said the duration of any deal had to be "significant" from the point of view of stability.

Talks between Mr McCarthy and Ictu representatives were subsequently adjourned at around 9pm.

Despite the failure to agree a deal after almost four months of talks on pay and other partnership issues, both sides remain determined to conclude an agreement if possible.

A comprehensive package of measures designed to underpin employment standards has already been largely agreed.

It is unlikely to be finalised and implemented, however, unless the parties can agree a deal on pay, which has been a critical element of all social partnership programmes.

There was some expectation yesterday that the Government would move to address union concerns about outstanding elements of the employment standards package.

Areas such as regulation of employment agencies and measures to ensure that all companies engaged in public contracts are in full compliance with labour law are among those yet to be concluded.

The hope was that if these could be addressed to Ictu's satisfaction, unions would find it difficult to walk away from an overall deal, even if the pay element did not quite meet their expectations.

Some movement was still required, however, from both sides on issues such as pay increases, the phasing of payments and the duration of a deal.

Failure to complete a deal on pay would result in an end to 19 years of unbroken social partnership.

The Irish Times also reports that anybody who invests in the stock market should know by now, particularly in light of the past fortnight, that shares can move down as well as up.

And nobody should know this better than holders of contracts for difference (CFDs), the derivative products that have become fashionable over the past couple of years. The premise behind CFDs is that they allow investors to put a certain amount of money into the market and then borrow a multiple of this to raise their exposure to a particular stock.

It works simply enough: you have, say, €100,000 and you leverage this up 10 times to create an exposure of €1 million. This then goes on €1 million worth of a particular stock, which is borrowed from the underlying holder for an agreed period. No stamp duty is paid, although this is under review. In theory, the holders of CFDs can bet on stocks moving down just as easily as putting money into them going up. In practice, however, the preferred wager will be on a positive move.

If the stock goes up, the investor gets a multiple of the benefit they would have got if they had just invested €100,000. Likewise, they can get badly burned if the stock goes down.

Since CFDs were introduced in the Republic in 2002, stocks have generally been moving in a positive direction. But since the second week of this month, the Iseq has lost about €6 billion in value, which is sure to have hit CFD holders harder than others.

Brokers need to be careful about who they sell CFDs to. Applying caution will see brokers selling CFDs only to well-informed and prosperous investors who have substantial assets to back up their exposure. This should mean brokers turn down investors at least as often as they take them on. But the nature of the business is that some always take more care than others.

"If you're borrowing to speculate, you'll definitely lose," says a market insider. The better scenario, he argues, is to treat the CFD borrowings as you would a mortgage, paying off the interest and debt as time goes on.

Brokers agree that most Irish CFD investors tend to stick to blue-chip names, such as major banks, which can offer some protection because the dividend yield will cover interest costs. They also tend to be less volatile.

Recent weeks have shown the banks to be vulnerable on occasion too, however, with Anglo Irish among the hardest hit.

There will always be investors who want CFDs in more volatile stocks, thereby increasing their potential return or loss. Experience with Elan last year showed this to be a risky strategy, with millions lost to CFD holders when the stock collapsed.

"The temptation is to continue to gear up," says one stockbroker, who says bigger wins often lead to bigger exposure. But he says the rising markets of the past months and years will have been good to most holders of CFDs, who should have built up a cushion to protect themselves.

The Irish Examiner reports that the property development company that owns the Blanchardstown shopping centre in west Dublin made profits of almost €40 million last year.

Newly filed accounts for Rodinheights Limited, the company that bought the then ISEQ-listed Green Property that owned the centre, show profits are down from the €95m generated in 2004. Profits that year were boosted by the gain on the sale of a number of investment properties.

Total income for the year to end June 2005 fell to €45.5m from €60m, again as a result of fewer properties on the company’s books. However, according to the accounts, rental income from the company’s retail property portfolio, which comes mainly from the Blanchardstown Centre, was up from €33m to €35.2 million.

Green Property was taken private by managing director Stephen Vernon in 2002 in a €1.05 billion deal backed by Merrill Lynch and Bank of Scotland.

Mr Vernon said at the time that the market value of the company’s shares did not reflect the value of its assets. Merrill Lynch has since sold out of Green Property, leaving Mr Vernon and Bank of Scotland each with a 50% stake in the company.

The company said 2005 saw a number of key events, including the sale of its British office after selling off the last of its property portfolio there.

“From a property perspective, the group completed a 130,000 sq ft extension of the Blanchardstown Centre in November 2004, which is anchored by Marks & Spencer. The group has also just commenced extensions totalling over 200,000 sq ft at the Blanchardstown Centre.

“There are also a number of significant developments in the pipeline.”

Rodinheights has assets of just under €700m, according to the accounts. Payments to directors shot up to €11.4m from €1.1m, the bulk of which went to Mr Vernon. Net debt at year end was €613m, down €100m.

The Financial Times reports that volatility in emerging markets and fears of a flight of foreign capital have come at a ‘critical’ time for developing countries’ financial markets, World Bank economists have warned.

Record amounts of money flowed into developing economies last year, the World Bank says in a report to be released on Tuesday. But recent sharp market falls, in particular last week, have intensified investor nervousness about the fragility of these markets.

Mansoor Dailami, the lead author of the report on global development finance, said: “This moment is so critical to give these countries the time to develop their markets. Many developing economies are half in, half out of the global financial system – they’re half open, half closed right now.”

A record surge in private capital for a third straight year to $491bn drove the overall rise in net inflows into emerging markets, which reached $472bn as official flows actually declined, the report says.

Many overseas investors have been putting money into local currency assets, which tend to offer higher returns. The money has allowed many developing economies to improve their financial position by paying down old dollar-denominated debt and instead issuing local currency bonds, which in turn has helped them develop and strengthen their local markets.

But volatile markets last week, triggered the biggest weekly outflow from emerging market funds in two years, according to Emerging Portfolio Fund Research, a consultancy.

Low interest rates in the developed world have allowed investors to leverage, borrowing cheaply to pick up the higher returns on offer elsewhere. It is those investors who are likely to have unwound trades over the past fortnight, weakening stocks and local bonds.

“If these foreigners withdraw, then local market rates go up and that’s an area we’re worried about,” said Mr Dailami.

The report also warns of the risks posed by the surge in capital flows, not least the risk of asset price bubbles. Global inflows into emerging market investment funds had already set an annual record by March this year, but there are concerns that the money flowing into local stock markets could be concentrated in a few better-known companies.

“You can have thousands of companies that are potentially good investments, but you have a few that get all the money,” said Mr Dailami.

“[This] may expose institutional and macroeconomic weaknesses that cannot be anticipated at this juncture,” the report said. “The impact of individual risks could be magnified if several [weaknesses] were to occur simultaneously.”

Last week, emerging stock markets endured their worst losing streak since Russia defaulted in 1998, a run that plunged world markets into turmoil.

The FT also reports that Universities Superannuation Scheme, Britain’s second biggest pension fund after BT Group, is considering a £6bn shift out of equities into alternative assets such as private equity and infrastructure investments.

USS, which invests retirement funds for 215,000 academics and senior university staff, has more than 80 per cent of its £21.7bn assets in UK and overseas equities – a heavier exposure than most other UK pension funds. The move into alternative assets would be aimed at reducing the proportion of the fund invested in equities.

Such a huge shift from equities, albeit over a number of years, would represent one of the biggest changes in asset allocation that the market has seen from a private pension fund.

USS says the investment rethink has not been prompted by the fund’s plunge into a £6.6bn deficit last year or by the gyrations of the equity market. Instead it follows an asset-liability modelling exercise by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. The fund’s external actuarial consultants advised that between 20-30 per cent of the fund could be shifted into alternative assets.

The change in policy would leave the university system still heavily exposed to a big equity-type bet. But more of the bet would lie in illiquid form, thus entailing higher risk.

Peter Moon, USS’ chief investment officer, says the aim is not primarily to reduce risk through diversification but to achieve returns similar to those in equities by investing in uncorrelated asset classes. At recent stock market values, Mr Moon says, a 20 per cent move into alternative assets would be worth about £6bn. Such a huge shift, he adds, would be difficult when so many other pension funds are also diversifying into alternative assets at the same time.

It would also take the USS time to build up a capability to choose and monitor outside fund managers. Mr Moon envisages an incremental increase, with £1.5bn being invested into other asset types by March 2008. In spite of having run up a £6.6bn deficit, the USS trustees are relying on high investment returns to correct the deficit in preference to raising the contribution rate paid by the universities.

In his triennial valuation of the fund last year, the USS’ actuary recommended an unchanged university contribution rate of 14 per cent of salaries, not withstanding its deficit.

The New York Times reports that when President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela wraps up this week's meeting of OPEC's 11 members in Caracas with an excursion for delegates to Canaima National Park, the location of the world's tallest waterfall, it will be another chance to remind energy markets of his influence in helping drive oil prices above $70 a barrel.

Of course, most delegates to the Thursday meeting are expected to nod politely to Venezuela's calls for output cuts that could drive prices even higher, while doing the opposite by reaping all they can from the current bonanza of high prices. The oil minister of the United Arab Emirates rejected talk on Monday of a possible cut in the cartel's output quotas of 28 million barrels a day.

Mohamed Bin Dhaen al-Hamli, head of the U.A.E.'s delegation to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, told reporters in Abu Dhabi that he did "not expect a change in the production level." Officials from Iran, an ally of Venezuela and OPEC's second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia, recently said they did not expect any output cuts this week.

Still, Mr. Chávez is using the meeting as a platform to celebrate energy policies that irk the United States. The meeting is the organization's first in Caracas since 2000, when Mr. Chávez emerged triumphant from an effort to instill discipline within OPEC after oil had plunged to $8 a barrel in the late 1990's. (Oil prices ended last week at $71.37 a barrel; markets were closed on Monday for a holiday.)

One of Mr. Chávez's goals is to increase OPEC's ranks. Mr. Chávez said last week that Venezuela would back Ecuador if it decided to rejoin OPEC, following Ecuador's decision this month to expel its largest foreign investor, Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles. Venezuela also offered to refine at subsidized rates oil exported by Ecuador, which was an OPEC member from 1973 to 1992, when it dropped out saying that it could not afford OPEC's membership fees. In another move that could add friction to the competition for oil resources between the United States and China, Sudan said last week that it was considering an invitation from Nigeria to join OPEC. With sanctions preventing American oil companies from investing in Sudan, China has emerged as a key investor in the country, Africa's third-largest oil producer after Nigeria, a longtime OPEC member, and Angola.

These efforts to enlarge OPEC, responsible for about 40 percent of the world's 84 million barrels a day of production, play directly into the ambitions of Mr. Chávez. He has been pushing for more nationalistic energy policies in Venezuela and other countries in South America like Bolivia, which has received generous financial backing from Venezuela.

It was a Venezuelan, after all, who was largely responsible 46 years ago for creating OPEC by modeling the group in part on the Texas Railroad Commission, an entity formed to prevent wild plunges in oil prices in the United States due to overproduction. Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, Venezuela's oil minister at the time, persuaded four nations from the Middle East to join OPEC at a meeting in Baghdad in September 1960.

While that meeting set the stage for the nationalization of oil assets in OPEC countries like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia in the 1970's, by the 1990's Venezuela was widely considered a saboteur of OPEC's efforts to raise oil prices by persistently producing above its official quotas and inviting foreign oil companies to help expand output.

It may seem like a distant memory in today's context of more belligerent rhetoric, but Venezuela had plans to double its oil production to seven million barrels a day before Mr. Chávez was elected president in 1998. Mr. Chávez reversed that policy, while also persuading OPEC members that output cuts, not ambitious investment programs, were needed to boost oil revenues.

"The Chávez administration doesn't care about market share," said David Mares, a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego who closely follows Venezuela's energy industry. "They care about the absolute amount of money coming into the country."

Few of Mr. Chávez's critics within Venezuela argue that high oil prices, whether driven earlier by his push for production discipline within OPEC or by today's robust demand for oil by China, India and the United States, have not increased Venezuela's financial clout. Oil export revenue climbed by $4.1 billion in the first quarter from a year earlier, increasing Venezuela's current account surplus by $2.8 billion to $7.5 billion, according to Barclays Capital.

Venezuela's stagnant oil production, however, points as much to a bounty lost as one gained. Venezuela produces just 2.2 million to 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, according to most analysts. That figure is down considerably from its output peak of about 3.5 million barrels a day, reached before Mr. Chávez purged Petroleos de Venezuela, the national oil company, of middle- and upper-management employees who had shut the company down in an effort to destabilize his presidency.

Meanwhile, OPEC's most pivotal member, Saudi Arabia, has comfortably raised production in recent years, even though much of its excess capacity is not easy to refine. With almost every OPEC member producing flat-out in an effort to meet unprecedented global demand, Venezuela lost an opportunity to earn even more from oil.

"The Saudis took their market share," said Amy Myers Jaffe, associate director of the energy program at Rice University. "They're pumping a million barrels a day more at $70 a barrel, while Venezuela is pumping about a million barrels a day less."

It may be with somewhat token symbolism, then, if Mr. Chávez calls for more cuts in OPEC's output this week. For Mr. Chávez to enhance his influence inside OPEC and to finance his ambitious foreign and domestic policies, analysts estimate that Venezuela needs to carry out plans to double its production to 5 million barrels a day.

It remains to be seen how this increase can be accomplished as Venezuela exerts greater control over international oil companies, which account for as much as half of its oil production. Venezuelan energy officials have signaled in recent days that they would seek up to a 60 percent controlling stake in exploration projects in the Orinoco River basin, one of the world's most promising, though politically complicated, oil reserves.

The NYT says that Fernando Katukina is chief of an indigenous tribe that lives largely without running water, electricity, or links to the world outside this remote corner of the western Amazon.

But Chief Fernando says he possesses a treasure that could be at the cutting-edge of biotechnology. If a plan initiated by the chief is successful, his tribe's fortunes will be transformed by an asset he and the Brazilian government believe holds great promise for the global pharmaceutical industry: the slime from a poisonous tree frog.

Tribal shamans have used the slime as an ancestral remedy to treat illness, pain, even laziness. The crucial ingredients are compounds with anesthetic, tranquilizing and other medicinal properties. Scientists say the promise lies in isolating peptides from the frog's slime and then reproducing them for medicines to treat hypertension, strokes and other illnesses

Already, Chief Fernando has the full backing of Brazil's government, which sees the frog slime as a stepping stone to significantly advance its own research and development in pharmaceuticals. In particular, the scientific challenge of the frog, known locally as the kambô, will deepen Brazil's expertise in pharmacogenomics — the combined use of genetics and pharmacology — and it takes advantage of the traditional knowledge of indigenous people.

"Traditional knowledge can help modern medicine and generate significant economic benefits, too," said Bruno Filizola, technical coordinator of the project and a biologist at the environment ministry in Brasília, Brazil's capital.

The indigenous dimension is also crucial because Brazil, like other developing nations, is trying to fight back against what it perceives as biopiracy, the theft of biological resources from the country's native habitats for commercial use. Though the project is still in its early stages, and many starts often prove false, teams of some 20 scientists are seeking initial financing of close to $1 million from more than a dozen local universities, state governments and federal agencies.

There is also a great deal more than naïve hope at stake here. Brazilian scientists have already taught the country's farmers, who today are among the world's top exporters, to manipulate soils and alter crops once unsuited for the country's climate. Now many researchers believe science can turn Brazilian forests into working, productive laboratories.

"Brazil has a large, growing and capable community of scientists keen to develop their own research and products," said Joshua Rosenthal, deputy director of a division for international training and research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Moreover, Brazilian researchers have not forgotten the case of the jararaca, the Amazonian viper. The pharmaceutical giant Squibb used the snake's venom to develop captopril, a blood pressure medicine it began selling in 1975. Though available generically since 1996, the medicine at its commercial peak was the largest selling product for the company, now part of New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb, grossing $1.6 billion in 1991.

"Because of past errors," reads a document from the Brazilian Environment Ministry, "captopril is not Brazilian."

Though home to the world's largest rainforest and one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, Brazil traditionally has been slow to develop its so-called genetic patrimony — the plants and animals within its territory and the potential they offer for profit. The Ministry document also laments Brazil's historical research lag and the consequent loss of billions in potential revenues from pharmaceuticals, agricultural products, and other commercial goods.

An overview for the effort known as Project Kambô, written by a team of researchers at the Environment Ministry, says, "The national genetic patrimony could be the key to Brazil's transformation in the global political and socio-economic context."

The effort comes as developing countries increasingly promote the idea of developing and commercializing their traditional medicines and local arts. And they are questioning the rights of foreigners to exploit their locally derived products. At a United Nations gathering in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba last month, delegates from developing nations called for changes to international law that would allow governments to block — or at least share profits from — foreign patents on biological resources found in their territory.

In December, at a World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong, India's trade minister told delegates that progress in global trade talks hinged on similar changes.

Private industry is wary. The road from research to finished product is long and costly. Rare is the compound, companies argue, that in unadulterated form would become the next wonder drug or other commercial bonanza.

"Developing nations should take a lead by working to develop their own resources — not blocking the efforts of others to research and invest," said Alan Oxley, a former Australian trade ambassador who is now a consultant in Melbourne and runs a research institute funded in part by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.

Brazil aims to take a lead through the kambô. The project was launched last year after Marina Silva, Brazil's environment minister, received a letter from Fernando, the Katukina chief, denouncing the growing use of kambô poison by outsiders. Its perceived benefits in recent years fueled a pirate trade in the poison in cities across Brazil.

The poison could be dangerous if administered wrongly, Chief Fernando warned. And its use, the letter added, is nothing less than biopiracy; if economic gain is generated by the remedy, the Katukina tribe should get a cut.

Ms. Silva, a native of the tribe's home state of Acre, agreed. She authorized a ministry project to study the kambô, stipulating that any profits derived from the research be shared with the Katukina.

"The know-how is the tribe's," she said in a recent telephone interview. "They must share in any rewards."

Scientists have studied the kambô before. Called the giant monkey frog in English, because it climbs high into the rainforest canopy, the kambô first sparked attention among foreign researchers decades ago. Some of the compounds from the poison, secreted through the frog's skin, have even been patented abroad.

Yet because scientists are still struggling to understand the poison, none of those patents have led to successful products. "These compounds have potent effects on human physiology," said Paul Bishop, a biochemist at ZymoGenetics, a Seattle-based pharmaceutical company, and the author of five patents based on kambô poison. "But we don't fully understand them all or just why they occur in the defenses of this tree frog."

That is where Brazil hopes to excel. While biologists and chemists investigate the kambô, its habitat and the poison's makeup, a team of anthropologists and physicians will study the long-term impact of its use on the Katukina.

One morning in mid-March, two scientists from the Federal University of Acre visited the tribe's reserve, a 125-square mile section of jungle near the Peruvian border. There, amid one of five clusters of wooden cabins, two shamans agreed to administer the kambô remedy, known in Portuguese as the "vacina do sapo," or "frog vaccine."

Reginaldo Machado, a biologist, stood shirtless and sweating next to an older shaman, who touched the red-hot end of a burning twig three times to the scientist's shoulder. The other shaman, another twig in hand, then daubed the sticky, mud-like poison on each of the tiny burns.

Mr. Machado, already in pain from a flare-up of chronic kidney stones, within seconds sprang from the wooden shack, suffering hot flashes, nausea, and stomach aches. Ten minutes later, he returned, expressing surprise.

"I actually do feel stronger," he said. "There's more to this than myth."

Though western dress long ago replaced the grass skirts traditionally worn by tribal people, the frog remedy is one of a handful of customs the Katukina preserve.

After catching the frog in nearby trees, tribe members tie it spread-eagle style between two posts, collecting slime from its back and sides with a piece of wood, where it dries. They then release the frog and later, with water or saliva, re-hydrate the dried poison before applying it.

Despite the term "vaccine," the slime does not vaccinate against any specific germ or illness.

Once the body processes the poison's toxins — hence Mr. Machado's sweats and indigestion — its compounds induce what users say is a prolonged sense of alertness and wellbeing. Because they believe it heightens their senses, Katukina hunters traditionally use it most: Long rows of burn scars dot their arms, chests and stomachs.

Most Katukina speak only the tribal variant of pano, a native Amazonian language group. Fernando, one of only two tribe members to work outside the reserve, is convinced of the kambô's value, and adamant that the medication, if used by others, can improve a tribal economy that is currently at the level of subsistence.

"The vaccine belongs to us," he said. "Science might help us develop it, but kambô knowledge is Katukina."