A 65 year old grandmother in Shanghai has been sentenced to three and a half years in jail, for what authorities say was a public disruption of order when she organised a protest campaigning for better retirement benefits.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates has lent his weight in support for a Tobin tax, ahead of his presentation at the G20 meeting in Cannes.
Bill Gates, billionaire technology entrepreneur and philanthropist, recently spoke to the BBC about asking the G20 to step up development efforts to ease poverty and his backing on a tax on financial transactions, adding that “steps have to be taken to restore confidence” that governments will pay their debts.
Russian businesses, which collectively put in billions of dollars in foreign investment last year, are most likely to offer bribes and kickbacks in commercial deals abroad, according to Transparency International’s latest Bribe-Payers Index.
Related: World Corruption Special Report
Nearly half of China’s rich are considering emigrating, said a report by the Bank of China and the Hurun Report, with the United States, Canada and Singapore taking the top three destinations spots.
In the joint report published in the Private Banking White Paper 2011, 46 percent of Chinese with assets worth more than 10 million yuan ($1.57 million) are considering moving abroad, while another 14 percent said they had already moved or were applying to do so.
Even as the threat of a eurozone wide financial meltdown tempers down, the risk of a European recession remains high, bringing about fresh concerns over the consequences for global growth and trade flows.
Several institutions have warned of the increasing risks of a European recession, days before the summit of G20 nations in Cannes.
The cost of college in the US has often been a major sticking point for American politicians. While President Barack Obama recently announced plans that would attempt to make college education for affordable for Americans, tuition fees are not the only concern for students.
Greece’s Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos was unaware of the Prime Minister’s decision to call a referendum on the latest EU aid deal till the announcement was actually made, said a Greek government official to Reuters on Tuesday.
The American economy may not be doing great, with jobless figures at an all-time high and debt repayments a constant burden. But this Halloween, Americans spent close to $7 billion in festive shopping.
The National Retail Federation estimates that $6.87 billion was spent on Halloween this year, up from $5.8 billion last year. According to figures, that is a $3.57 billion increase from 2005, before the financial crisis began.
A senior official from Japan has confirmed that Japan will continue purchasing EFSF bonds, but stopped short of a commitment to inject additional liquidity into Europe’s emergency bailout fund.
In an Asian tour to market the sale of EFSF bonds, Klaus Regling, chief executive officer of the EFSF told reporters that “the Japanese government will continue to buy the EFSF bonds we have been issuing.”
A second alternative energy company, which received a loan guarantee similar to the one acquired by Solyndra from the same US Department of Energy (DOE) program, has gone bankrupt – barely a year after receiving US government financing to provide green energy jobs and resources for the country.
Beacon Power Corp., a Massachusetts based energy storage company, filed for Chapter 11 proceeding late on Sunday, becoming the second green tech company that had been backed by the US government to become bankrupt in the space of two months.
