India’s government has urged China to respect its water rights over the Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra River, reported AFP on Thursday, after the Chinese government revealed plans to build three hydroelectric dams upstream, which may possibly affect water flow along Indian territory.
Tax chiefs from the world’s Big Four accountancy firms – KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and Ernst & Young – on Thursday denied accusations from the U.K. parliament that they had advised clients on adopting “aggressive” tax avoidance schemes, arguing rather that their methods were completely legal and benefitted the country by encouraging companies to locate and recruit there.
How do companies measure the effectiveness of a digital marketing campaign? Here’s a tip: if the answers to that contain the words “halo effect” or “influences”, the results are probably BS.
The digital landscape has evolved. Virtually every business today understands how important social media is to a brand, as well as how difficult it is to measure the effectiveness and success of an online campaign.
Greece’s finance minister believes that the worst is over for his country and is confident that 2013 will be the last year of the recession. Greece has been in steep economic decline, shrinking over 20 percent since the start of the global financial crisis and had on many occasions been on the verge of a ‘Grexit’ and default.
Despite soaring unemployment and poverty rates, Greek finance minister Yannis Stournaras thinks the bad times are coming to an end and is confident that the economy will start to grow next year.
Paris may be known worldwide as the “City of Light”, but Parisians will have no choice but to embrace the darkness starting from July 1, reported Reuters, after the French environment ministry issued a decree on Wednesday ordering all non-residential properties to switch off their lights at night.
Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc was cleared on Wednesday from four out of five allegations of wrongdoing in oil spills in the Niger Delta, reported AFP, with the company’s Nigerian subsidiary ordered to pay unspecified damages for the remaining claim – to a farmer whose fishponds were devastated.
Chinese banks have extended at least three-quarters of loans made to local governments at the height of the global economic crisis. According to data compiled by the Financial Times, the repayments – worth at least 3 trillion yuan ($482 billion) – were due at the end of last year and the rollover is aimed at averting a wave of defaults that could have dealt a harsh blow to the world’s second largest economy.
Catalonia has formally requested 9 billion euros ($12.3 billion) from a bailout fund created by Spain to save its financially beleaguered regions, as well as a lower deficit reduction target. Just two months ago, the industrious but indebted region in northern Spain had pushed for a referendum on independence, believing it would be financially and economically better off without the rest of Spain.
A U.N.-sponsored summit in Kuwait on Wednesday will call for a drastic increase in international relief funds for nearly 5 million Syrians, reported the Associated Press, following fresh reports of atrocities inflicted on the civilian population, including 78 bodies found floating along a river in the city of Aleppo on Tuesday.
Zimbabwe’s government public accounts are now dangerously close to bankruptcy, warned its Finance Minister Tendai Biti on Tuesday, with the country set to approach international donors for cash in order to fund a constitutional referendum and elections expected to be held later this year.
