Category: World

WASHINGTON, May 15, 2007 (AFP) – World Bank executive directors said late Tuesday they would continue deliberations about the fate of the embattled bank president, Paul Wolfowitz. In a terse, two-sentence statement, the board said it had met Tuesday to discuss a report by an investigatory bank panel that concluded Wolfowitz had broken rules in […]

WASHINGTON, May 14, 2007 (AFP) – The World Bank executive board will decide on Tuesday whether bank president Paul Wolfowitz can continue to lead the institution, the bank said in a statement on Monday. A special bank committee “recommends the Executive Directors to consider whether Mr.Wolfowitz will be able to provide the leadership needed to […]

SYDNEY, May 13, 2007 (AFP) – Through wars, disasters and coups, foreign correspondent Kate Webb chronicled the turbulent birth of modern Asia, becoming a media legend who had the eerie experience of reading her own obituary. Webb, who died of cancer on Sunday at 64, covered many of Asia’s seminal events of the last four […]

GENEVA, May 13, 2007 (AFP) – Further increases in Swiss interest rates are still on the cards, one of Switzerland’s central bankers said Sunday, while also praising the management of the euro currency.The eurozone is Switzerland’s biggest foreign trade market. Thomas Jordan, who joined the board of the Swiss National Bank on May 1, told […]

BEIJING, May 14, 2007 (AFP) – China’s consumer price inflation eased in April, rising 3.0 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Monday. The index, a key indicator of consumer inflation in the world’s fourth-largest econnomy, was down from a year-on-year rise of 3.3 percent in March. Compared with March, consumer […]

HARARE, May 13, 2007 (AFP) – Zimbabwean cashier Cosmas Gwizo does not look forward to pay day.For the 43-year-old earning 500,000 Zimbabwean dollars a month (about 2,000 dollars) the receipt of his salary cheque is a painful rather than joyous occasion. “Each time I receive my pay cheque I start scratching my head trying to […]

WASHINGTON, May 9, 2007 (AFP) – The board of the World Bank has given an additional week to embattled bank president Paul Wolfowitz to defend himself in a nepotism scandal, the bank said in a statement Wednesday.“The Executive Directors met today to consider a request from the President for additional time to comment on the […]

KYOTO, Japan, May 5, 2007 (AFP) – The Asian Development Bank came under pressure Saturday not to abandon the region’s poorest as it considers a major overhaul in response to warnings that it risks becoming irrelevant. With Asia’s rapid economic growth expected to wipe out widespread absolute poverty in much of the region by 2020, […]

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, April 27, 2007 (AFP) – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Friday that burgeoning economic ties with Asian countries were paying off for the country shunned by its former trading allies in the west. “I am pleased to report that significant headway has been made with a number of investment projects that have […]

HARARE, April 26, 2007 (AFP) – Zimbabwe, already battling to contain the world’s highest rate of inflation, announced on Thursday that the figure had soared once more to 2,200 percent. Before the devaluation, the Zimbabwean dollar had been trading at around 25,000 to the greenback, against the official rate of 250 dollars. After the official […]

MUMBAI, April 24, 2007 (AFP) – The Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday left key short-term borrowing rates unchanged as it seeks to keep economic growth on track despite inflation running well above its comfort zone.The RBI’s decision had been widely expected following a series of rate hikes but significantly, the central bank also tweaked […]

SINGAPORE, April 23, 2007 (AFP) – The debate over the million-dollar paychecks of Singapore’s cabinet ministers is “rubbish” because the city-state needs to attract extraordinary people to run it, founding leader Lee Kuan Yew said in remarks published Monday.“The biggest mistake any Singaporean can make is to believe that Singapore is an ordinary country and […]