Jose M Joya

Off to college? It can be a bit scary, especially if you don't know anyone at the school you plan to attend. Still, take heart; things could be worse. Girls and boys of the Okiek tribe of Kenya are ritually circumcised or excised when they're 14-16 years old. They then cover themselves in clay and

Someday, the conventional wisdom and statistics keep telling us, we're all going to throw out our wallets and replace them with digital phones.

Bank Polska Kasa Opieki S.A. (PEO.WA), Poland's second-largest bank by assets, said Friday it sees market conditions worsening in the second half of the year after it reported a small decline in second-quarter earnings. The bank, which is known as Pekao and is a unit of Italy's UniCredit SpA

Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS) said that its first-half net loss widened to GBP1.99 billion and warned that it faced several potential lawsuits over allegations that it tried to fix interbank lending rates.

Switzerland's buoyant property market cooled slightly in the second quarter, but record low mortgage rates and the ongoing influx of cash-rich migrants are likely to see prices continue to rise in the future, according to a market monitoring index released Friday.

German automotive supplier Continental AG (CON.XE) fulfills the requirements to join the DAX index of the largest and most liquid issues traded on the Frankfurt stock exchange, Chief Financial Officer Wolfgang Schaefer told Boersen-Zeitung newspaper in an interview published Friday.

Ayala Land Inc.'s (ALI.PH) second-quarter net profit rose 25% from the year-earlier period as earnings at the Philippines' largest property developer by sales and market capitalization continued to be boosted by the buoyant real-estate market, it said Friday.

Toyota Motor Corp. (7203.TO) said Friday that its net profit surged in the fiscal first quarter from the year-earlier period, when the impact of natural disasters in Japan disrupted its manufacturing operations and cut its supply of vehicles.

European stocks are expected to start close to the flat line Friday, following disappointment at the European Central Bank's inaction Thursday, and investors will now turn their attention to the closely watched U.S. nonfarm payrolls report, which is seen as a key indicator of the health of the

Allianz SE (ALV.XE) said Friday that second-quarter net profit rose 23%, helped by lower sovereign debt losses, plus gains in life & health insurance, asset management and investments.