Rates of unemployment for lowest-income families in the U.S. – those earning less than $20,000 a year – have topped 21 percent in 2013, according to a report by the Associated Press on Monday, matching the level of unemployment suffered during the 1930s Great Depression and creating a wide employment gap between the rich and the poor.
Emerging markets are under pressure. This column argues that this is not a mere headwind but that the BRICs’ party is over. Their ability to get going again rests on their ability to carry through reforms in grim times for which they lacked the courage in a boom.
More than 250 companies and individuals were placed on the World Bank’s blacklist of corrupt or fraudulent entities during the first seven months of 2013, said the international organisation on Sunday, with the total amounting for nearly four times the number for the whole of 2012 and the highest number of reported cases over the last seven years.
Japan has temporarily switched off its final working nuclear reactor in the western prefecture of Fukui for safety checks, marking only the second time in 40 years that the country will not have access to any nuclear power supply.
According to The BBC, Reactor 4 at the Ohi power plant in the western prefecture of Fukui was shut down in the early hours of Monday morning, as renewed concerns grew over the safety of nuclear power plants – arising from radioactive water leaks at Fukushima.
The Chinese government on Thursday unveiled a new multi-pronged approach to tackle the country’s notorious air pollution problem, including a ban on the construction of new coal power plants at three key industrial regions, as well as investments into energy efficient projects that will cut energy consumption per unit of industrial value by 20 percent.
The widespread consumption of tobacco in India is expected to cause the deaths of around 1.5 million Indians a year by 2020, according to a new report by the International Tobacco Control Project (ITCP), calling on authorities to better enforce existing smoke-free laws and to raise the price of the product in order to discourage over-consumption.
Canada’s new military engagement with Asia represents a shift in its defence policy, after a decade or so of near-absenteeism. But is Canada simply following the whims of American initiatives – the so-called “Pacific Pivot” – or are they serious about taking a more involved role in regional security?
There are now 315 billionaires in China, according to the Hurun Report’s 2013 Rich List, with the top five seeing their net-worth double on average over the last year, as a surge in stock and asset prices helped boost overall wealth.
The Hurun Report, which tracks China’s wealthiest people, named property tycoon Wang Jianlin as China’s new richest person, with a net-worth of close to $22 billion.
Some 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted every year, said a United Nations report published on Wednesday, bringing about major economic losses to food producers and causing significant environmental damage due to needlessly produced greenhouse gases.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), about 28 percent of the world’s farmland was producing food that would not be eaten. This contributed to an additional 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases to the planet’s atmosphere, while the food waste also cost producers some $750 billion annually.
Ministers from Japan and India have called on energy exporters to reduce the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG), complaining that Asian states had been paying a higher ‘premium’ for the energy resource– compared to the prices paid by European and North American nations.
