The United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has banned Japan from hunting for whales off Antarctica, ruling that the nation’s annual hunt was not for scientific research as Tokyo had claimed, reported the Associated Press.
The German defence ministry is considering providing military assistance to some eastern European members of the NATO defence alliance, in order to assuage fears of further Russian aggression following their actions in Crimea, reported Der Spiegel over the weekend.
The defence ministry in Berlin could send up to six air force planes to patrol the Baltic region, the news magazine said, adding that the number of NATO aircraft could be doubled at least.
In what has been described as the largest corruption scandal in the country in more than six decades, Chinese authorities have seized at least 90 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) in assets from family members and associates of former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang – once also a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top decision-making body.
Ukraine will raise domestic gas prices by as much as 50 percent starting from May 1, said the government on Wednesday, in order to meet a key loan condition set by the IMF for an expedited $15 billion bailout.
According to AFP, the IMF had made it clear to Ukraine’s new leaders during meetings in Kiev that an immediate end to Ukraine’s costly gas subsidies was one of its prime conditions to approve the bailout package.
The Malaysian economy could lose nearly $1.3 billion in tourism revenue this year, according to analysts speaking to the South China Morning Post, with many Chinese tourists now cancelling their trips following the controversy surrounding the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
The world’s largest banks have forked out close to $100 billion to settle U.S.-based legal disputes since the beginning of the financial crisis, according to a research study by the Financial Times.
Last week, Credit Suisse agreed to pay $885 million deal to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, after it was accused of mis-selling mortgage-backed securities during the run up to the financial crisis.
Organised crime syndicates in Italy operate on an annual budget of more than 200 billion euros ($276 billion), claimed the country’s foreign ministry on Tuesday, with significant investments both in and outside Italy.
Speaking at the Second Annual European Cyber Security Conference in Brussels, Giovanni Brauzzi, security policy director at the Italian ministry of foreign affairs, said that crime syndicates in Italy had begun to shift their “investments” overseas, with just 10 percent of their budget still parked within the country.
Medical ailments brought on by air pollution is causing up to 7 million deaths a year, said a new report by the World Health Organisation, making air pollution the world’s largest single environmental health risk.
Standard & Poor’s on Monday cut the credit rating on Brazil’s long-term bonds from BBB+ to BBB-, reported Bloomberg, ending a decade-long stretch of upgrades for Latin America’s largest economy.
Malware related issues linked to using pirated software could cost companies and enterprises nearly $491 billion this year alone, according to a joint study by the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the International Data Corporation (IDC), with nearly $364 billion likely to be spent on handling data breaches.
