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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.

New York: The United Nations climate change talks in Cancún have concluded with a package of decisions to help countries advance towards a low-emissions future, delivering what the world body's top officials have hailed as a victory in the battle against one of today's biggest challenges.

The income-tax (I-T) department has finally woken up to notice a possible mega-scale money laundering by the estranged Mittal brothers and founders of the India-based Rs. 10,000-crore-plus Ispat group – Pramod and Vinod – over a period of 20 years. The Ispat group is a rival of Ispat International built by their more illustrious elder, Lakshmi Niwas. The real architect of both the groups is their father, M L Mittal, who made a humble start from Kolkata in the 1950s with an electric arc furnace at Dankuni , the setting up of Andhra Steel Corporation, Nippon Denro, PT Ispat Indo, a wire rod mill at Surabaya in Indonesia, and the take-over of Gontermann-Peipers India. Rivalry among the sons led to an early retirement of the father.