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New York: A United Nations initiative launched three years ago to resettle tens of thousands of refugees from camps in eastern Nepal passed the 40,000 mark today, the world body’s refugee agency reported.

The Belgian economy is recovering from the financial crisis and global recession. Although the economy has good fundamentals, the financial market turbulence in the euro area poses risks to the recovery. An encompassing strategy to better control public spending pressures, including from population aging, and to increase employment is urgently needed. Therefore, it is important for the authorities to focus on macroeconomic policy priorities, in particular measures to proceed with fiscal consolidation, contain risks in the financial sector, and push ahead with structural reforms to boost job creation and growth.

Estonia has been successful in its all-out efforts to join the euro area on January 1, 2011. This represents the culmination of 18 years of a fundamentally sound currency board arrangement, supported by a strong commitment to fiscal rectitude that consistently delivered surpluses prior to the crisis. Moreover, despite enduring one of the sharpest contractions in the EU in 2009, the authorities commendably persevered with policies based on satisfying the Maastricht criteria. With the fiscal deficit remaining comfortably below the Maastricht ceiling in 2010, Estonia has earned the distinction of being one of only two EU countries not currently under an Excessive Deficit Procedure.

New Delhi: The Minister of Mines and Development of North Eastern Region Shri B.K. Handique has said that as per the NER Vision 2020 Document, accelerating growth in the NER to catch up with the rest of the country requires a massive increase in investment.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is supporting the governments of Cambodia, Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) and Viet Nam in a community-driven initiative to conserve more than 1.9 million hectares of threatened forest land, home to over 170,000 mostly poor, ethnic minority people.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Board of Directors today approved a Microfinance Risk Participation Program, marking ADB's first large scale private sector microfinance initiative.

Haryana politics is again astir. Now that the rabi sowing season is over and farmers are relatively less occupied, the political parties have resumed holding public rallies.

KOLKATA: Going by the level of popular response so far, it may be safely said that the agitation against the Rajarhat township launched by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has not turned out to be as politically productive as hoped for by its sponsors. There are several reasons for this.

WTO agriculture negotiators will embark on the talks’ end-game from 17 January 2011, with the aim of producing a near-final revised draft of “modalities” by the end of March and concluding the Doha Round as a whole by the end of the year. That is the plan outlined by Chairperson David Walker in agriculture negotiations meetings on 6 and 10 December, and supported by negotiators.

The program for the consolidation of the Greek economy is at a crucial crossroads as a series of fundamental structural changes have to be implemented in the following few months, said IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Khan in an interview with Kathimerini.