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Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have commended the authorities for their sound fundamentals and forceful countercyclical policies, which helped Malaysia emerge from the global downturn with a strong forward momentum. A broad-based recovery is underway and policies are returning to more normal settings. The challenge now is to make progress toward the authorities' target of economic growth and structural transformation.

New York: United Nations independent human rights experts have urged the repeal of all laws discriminating against people affected by leprosy, which has been eliminated as a public health problem in most countries but still carries a strong social stigma.

Guess who is complaining about the fiscal dominance of the monetary policy. Duvvuri Subbarao is not the only Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor to be unhappy about the interference of the North Block, the home of the union finance ministry, in the central bank's exercise of the monetary policy making powers to control inflation. Several of his predecessors in RBI had felt the same way but could do little to ensure independence of the central bank in fixing interest rates and control the inflow of private equity (PE) and excessive unaccounted foreign funds in the stock market from dubious sources through circuitous routes creating additional pressure on money supply.

KOLKATA: It is time that senior UPA Ministers like Mr. P. Chidambaram or Mr. Pranab Mukherjee start calling a spade a spade: the sooner they concede that the Trinamool Congress has close links with the CPI (Maoist) party, the better it would be for the image of the Congress (I).

New York: The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that Madagascar is at risk of a crop-eating locust plague, potentially jeopardizing the livelihoods of 460,000 rural families.

Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have commended the authorities of Latvia for undertaking difficult fiscal and financial sector reforms, which have helped stabilize the economy and contributed to a rebound after last year's deep recession. Although near-term vulnerabilities have declined substantially, the recovery is still fragile and significant medium-term challenges remain toward the goal of euro adoption. Directors underscored the importance of sustained fiscal adjustment, restoration of financial sector health, and continued structural reforms aimed at reorienting growth toward the tradable sector, boosting employment and competitiveness, and improving the business environment.

New York: A painting warning of the dangers of pollution by a teenager from Hong Kong, China, beat out hundreds of thousands of entries from around the world to win this year's United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) painting competition, it was announced today.

New York: The International Year of Youth kicked off today with calls from United Nations officials to harness the talents and energy of the world's young people to promote better understanding and dialogue between different generations, cultures and religions.

As a nation we are now poised to take some historic steps, collectively, to empower our children and thereby, our entire nation. As the Human Resource Development Minister of the country, it is my duty and obligation to ensure that our children are placed at the centre of the ambitious education reforms programme embarked upon by my Ministry. My vision for the future is that of a wholly Child Centric Education system. We cannot afford to be the slaves of the past. We must keep ourselves in synch with the processes of change sweeping through the globe. We need to learn from the past, build on it and create opportunities for the future of our present children as well as the future of the unborn ones.

New Delhi: Inclusion of Hindi as an official language in the UN has several financial and procedural implications which require to be met before a formal proposal can be tabled in the UN. Procedurally, the UN General Assembly (the legislative body of the UN) would need to adopt a resolution by a majority of the 192 member states. After this stage, India, as the proposing country, would need to provide sufficient financial resources to the UN to cover the additional expenditure related to interpretation, translation, printing and duplication of documents and related infrastructural costs. This, according to conservative estimates, could cost in excess of US $ 14 million per year.