China has engaged in widespread cyber espionage in a bid to extract information about America’s foreign policy deliberations and military capabilities, said the Pentagon in the most explicit U.S. statement yet charging that it is China that is behind at least some of the many intrusions into U.S. government computer systems.
Oskar Lafontaine, the German finance minister who helped to launch the euro, has called for the breakup of the single currency to let peripheral Europe recover from its economic slump, warning that the current trajectory of the euro is “leading to disaster”.
The Saudi Arabian government may cut its fuel and electricity subsidies for consumers as a measure to ease the burden on the economy, hinted a top finance official on Tuesday, after the cost of energy subsidies rose to about one-fifth of Saudi Arabia’s GDP in 2011.
Nearly one in four British children – 3.4 million – could be living in relative poverty by 2020, warned an independent think-tank on Tuesday, taking the nation’s child poverty levels back to the turn of the century when then-Prime Minister Tony Blair first announced plans to “eradicate” it.
Debt-laden Greece has made tremendous progress to improve its finances but must do more to fight its “notorious” tax evasion if the country is to remain on course to reduce its budget deficit, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
Senior officials at a top US derivatives regulator are considering whether to place Bitcoin under its supervision after the virtual currency collapsed in value last month.
According to a report by the Financial Times, Bart Chilton, one of five commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commissions, has ordered a study to explore whether consumers needed more protection from any mishaps with Bitcoin, whose value collapsed last month.
More than a quarter of South Africa’s labour force are now out of work, according to official statistics published on Monday, as the country continues to struggle with the global economic recession caused by the 2008 financial crisis.
According to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), the jobless rate increased from 24.9 percent in the previous three months to 25.2 percent, with the number of people without jobs rising by 100,000 to 4.6 million.
China is leading an international effort to eliminate the ranking of countries in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report, claimed the Financial Times on Monday, after officials last year criticised the Bank for utilising “wrong methodologies” to rate China, leading to a poor score for the world’s second largest economy.
The Group of 7 nations will meet in the UK later this week where discussions will focus on combating tax evasion as well as whether austerity policies are the most effective route for reviving growth.
Monday, May 6
European Union Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht is expected to recommend punitive duties of between 40 to 60 percent for Chinese solar panel manufacturers after investigations reveal that they benefitted from illegal government subsidies and then sold their products below cost in the EU, according to sources close to the matter.
