News on Marketing and Economic Development

Sri Lanka's central bank chief said Saturday that the island could live without a major IMF bailout that had been delayed by the final stages of the government's fight with Tamil Tiger rebels. The government had requested the 1.9-billion-dollar loan in March to help stave off its first balance of payments deficit in four years after foreign currency reserves fell to around six weeks' worth of imports. The loan was delayed under political pressure from the United States, Britain and other countries who felt the government was ...

Denmark's Minister for Climate Connie Hedegaard said here there was no "Plan B" if negotiations broke down for an ambitious climate accord at a December world summit in Copenhagen. "It's clear, we are not working for a Plan B," Hedegaard said after a ministerial meeting of 29 countries from all continents to boost the talks that she said were going too slowly. "To seal a deal in Copenhagen is a political challenge, not a technical one," Hedegaard said at a press conference in this western Greenland town, adding ...

Gunmen abducted two female aid workers in Darfur on Friday, said the international peacekeeping mission in the western region of Sudan. It was the third kidnapping of foreign humanitarian workers since March, when an international court issued a warrant for the country's president on charges of orchestrating war crimes in Darfur. The series of abductions, along with Sudan's expulsion of 13 international aid agencies in response to the arrest warrant, has struck a blow to the vital aid effort in the remote desert region, now in its sixth ...