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New York: Senegal has made significant progress in improving human rights, but the country should put the former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré on trial for international crimes, and combat the trafficking of children across West Africa, the United Nations human rights chief said today.

A mission from the African Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visited Tanzania during March 4-16, 2011, to conduct the 2011 Article IV consultation and the second review under Tanzania’s Policy Support Instrument (PSI). The mission met with Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, Hon. Mustafa Mkulo; Governor of the Bank of Tanzania, Prof. Benno Ndulu; other senior government officials; private sector representatives; and members of civil society.

New York: The Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot leaders met today and continued their discussion on the issue of citizenship, one of the topics on the agenda under the United Nations-sponsored talks seeking the reunification of the Mediterranean island.

The traditional definition of sovereign risk (broadly, the probability that a country may not pay its debts) has been shown to be too narrow by the global financial crisis. Developments since mid-2008 have exposed very complex interactions between fiscal balances, public and private debt, and the financial sector.

New York: The United Nations today appealed to the world community to make up a huge shortfall in this year’s nearly half-billion-dollar programme to clean up mines and other remnants of war, which claim thousands of victims annually long after the conflicts that spawned them have ended.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today completed the second review of Iraq’s economic performance under a program supported by a Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). Completion of the second review makes an additional SDR 297.1 million (about US$471.1 million) available for disbursement, bringing the total resources currently purchased by Iraq under the SBA to SDR 1.069 billion (about US$1.7 billion).

New Delhi: The Directorate of Film Festivals, a Media Unit under Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. of India has set in motion the process for inviting entries for the 58th National Film Awards for 2010. The awards (Swarna Kamal & Rajat Kamal) will be presented in three Sections---Feature Films, Non Feature Films and Best Writing on Cinema. The notification to this effect along with the detailed regulations has been put on the Directorate’s website.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh made a statement in both the houses in parliament on 'Cash for Vote' wiki expose and said that he did not authorised any one to bribe. This is what he said in Lok Sabha today:

Inflation concerns currently outweigh growth for China’s leaders, even as its twelfth five-year plan gets under way this year with a modest target and greater emphasis on quality of growth that is “healthy and sustainable”, creates better jobs and improves human wellbeing. Unlike India’s obsession with 9 per cent “inclusive growth”, with the elevated inflation eclipsed, Premier Wen Jiabao in a work report to the National People’s Congress said stabilizing consumer prices at around 4 per cent would be top priority this year. Overall social stability is the prime concern at present.

It has always posed to be a big challenge before the judiciary to bring law offenders to justice when such persons enjoy strong political patronage and a kind of unwritten administrative immunity or backing. To prove such law offenders guilty is even a bigger challenge in the face of a non-cooperative administration deliberately making light of such cases under instruction from the political masters.