The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
Vienna recently played host to delegates from 49 states who had gathered for a UN-sponsored conference to review a 1990 treaty on conventional weapons. The special focus of the conference, which began on September 25, was on limiting the use of tandmines which kill or maim about 20,000 civilians a …
VOLCANOES could have played a central role in the series of extinction events throughout geologic history, conclude researchers. The study, coauthored by several American geologists, claims that a volcanic eruption that lasted a million years and flooded Siberia with a mile-deep lava may have killed 80 per sent of the …
GLOBAL collaboration in space exploration has taken another giant leap forward with the signing in August of a us $190 million deal - to develop and launch the first module of a new international space station called Alpha - between Russia's Krunichey Space Center and the Boeing Defense and Space …
IN A severe indictment of the government's economic policies, the Planning Commission has observed that capital expenditure on infrastructure and social sector have suffered most in the quest for fiscal deficit control. Public investment in agriculture has become stag- nant or has decreased over the first 3 years (1992-95) of …
THE devastating fire which raged through Greece in July ravaging its precious pine and fir forests, might now lead to the flooding of capital Athens. The 3-day fire burnt down forests on 10,000 acres of land to ashes, spelling doom for the city in its wake; forestry experts predict repeated …
The Platform for Action is an agenda for women’s empowerment. It aims at accelerating the implementation of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women and at removing all the obstacles to women’s active participation in all spheres of public and private life through a full and equal share …
The Brazilian government has come down heavily on the Kayapo Indians, an Amazonian tribe. The Kayapoes are "mining" mahogany from the reserve forests in northern Brazil and wreaking havoc on the pristine forest cover, allege the authorities; therefore, they must be stopped immediately. Now, a court in Brasilia has banned …
• State-of-the-art technology worth Rs 15 billion will be employed by the Mathura oil refinery to reduce emission of sulphur dioxide and lower the pollution level in the sensitive Taj Mahal area of Agra, said the general manager of the refinery J L Raina in Mathura recently. • The World …
The United Nations Population Fund, in its recently published annual report, expresses serious concern over the overwhelming rise in sexual diseases the world over and examines problems surrounding contraception and abortion. The report observes that the present trend of "marrying late" encourages the younger generation to indulge in more casual …
The broad terms of the draft agreement expected to be ratified in August by countries participating in the 6th session of the United Nations Conference on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks are fine in form but slightly short on content. Prospects of the sustainable use of this …
CHINA'S 700-page white paper on scientific research, presented at the recent National Science and Technology Conference in Beijing, calls for the commercialisation of research results, according primacy to marketable advancements. It is a pertinent effort, in tune with the ongoing technological revolution in the world and the upgrading of outdated …
Unsustainable economic conditions and farming practices have reduced 80 per cent of the total surface area of the southern Argentine state of Patagonia -- once prime grazing land for sheep -- to deserts. This has forced thousands of small farmers to migrate to the cities. The genesis of the problem …
COMPU RECORDS: The staff at River Hills West Healthcare Center in Pewaukee, Wis.,in the US are done forever with the tiresome patient logbook, where they maintained the minutest details of the multiple doses of the myriad drugs that the 245 resident patients have to be administered daily. Now all they …
Tests conducted by us scientists on sea sponges collected from Fiji's waters have brought to light their potentially cancer fighting properties. But Fijian scientists are worried that the country's marine life will be wiped out if researchers from scientific institutions and pharmaceutical firms worldwide flood in to collect samples for …
Foreign and national investors are being wooed in a big way to the Ivory Coast, which is overhauling its 30-year-old mining code for their benefit. The objective, according to a draft code presented before the parliament, is to make mining of gold, diamonds and other minerals as important to the …
AN alternative structural adjustment programme (asap), formulated by the Guyana-based Bretton Woods Reform Organisation (bwro), has managed to garner German support for itself. Backed by Germany's ministry of economic cooperation and development, asap is working on over 100 major policy recommendations for the development of people's priorities in every sector …
The future of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) seems endangered as calls to reform the UN attain stridency. Created in 1964 for providing development ideas, the UNCTAD has emerged high on the hit list, since the creation of the World Trade Organization has rendered it superfluous. Industrialised …
With severe malnutrition threatening 68 per cent of all its children under 5 years, Bangladesh has been provided with a World Bank (WB) credit of US $59.8 million to improve nutrition. The fund will help set up a national nutritional programme which will design and implement plans for improving nutrition …
For people who have always been fascinated by tattoos but have never braved them, a combination of 2 quick and painless methods of tattooing has been devised by the UK-based Dreadco. The spray immuniser method fires a shot of vaccine at the skin, making the dye penetrate the skin surface. …
Congolese President Pascal Lissouba has said that the lending policies of development institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are "deadly" for the heavily indebted nations of Africa because of the social costs of their tough economic reform programmes. Lissouba's own nation is reeling under one of the world's heaviest …
