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New York: Community and grass-roots initiatives have a crucial role to play in preventing drug use, the United Nations anti-narcotics chief said today.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today approved a new 24-month precautionary Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) in the amount equivalent to SDR 3,090.6 million (about €3.5 billion, 300 percent of quota), with the SBA coming into effect on March 31, 2011. The authorities have informed the IMF that they intend to treat the new arrangement as precautionary and therefore do not plan to draw under it. The SBA will be in conjunction with precautionary support from the European Union of €1.4 billion and a loan from the World Bank of €0.4 billion.

New York: The United Nations will turn out the lights at its New York Headquarters tomorrow night at 8:30 p.m. in observance of Earth Hour 2011, a global event aimed at promoting awareness of the need to take action on climate change.

The International Monetary Fund has introduced an analytical framework for assessing vulnerabilities and emerging risks in low-income countries (LICs) arising from changes in the global economy. The proposed Vulnerability Exercise for Low-Income Countries is intended to enable Fund staff to spot vulnerabilities and assess member countries’ resilience to emerging risks before they materialize, and thus help guide policy responses.

New York: As many as 1 million people have been driven from their homes in Côte d’Ivoire in the months-long turmoil stemming from the outgoing president’s refusal to leave office, with violence mounting and his loyalists using heavy weapons against civilians, a top United Nations official said today.

New Delhi: Both of the Houses of the Parliament have been adjourned sine die on Friday on the demand from the leaders of various political parties as many of them would be engaged in the ongoing poll process in five states and Union territories.

New Delhi: The Indian Defence Minister AK Antony called upon the top brass of the defence research body, DRDO to nurture talent and ensure “fairness at all levels” in order to realise the organisation’s goals.

New Delhi: The Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, in a gesture of goodwill, has invited Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and the country’s Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani to watch the India-Pakistan semi-final match of the World Cup in Mohali in Punjab (in India) on March 30.

New Delhi: The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has planned to facilitate India’s cooperation with the African continent.

On Day 1 (March 12), they first dismissed it as a minor accident, which would be brought quickly under control by Japan’s highly advanced nuclear industry. On Day 2, when there was an explosion in Reactor 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which had been starved of coolant water, they called it “a purely chemical reaction and not a nuclear emergency as described by some sections of the media”. One of them even said, “there is no nuclear accident or incident” in Japan. “It is a well-planned emergency preparedness programme which the nuclear operators … company are carrying out to contain the residual heat after the plants had an automatic shutdown.”