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WASHINGTON ― The World Bank Board of Executive Directors has approved an International Development Association (IDA) grant of US$120 million to increase agricultural productivity and improve marketing of crops and animal products by smallholder farmers in targeted areas of northern Equateur province and the Pool Malebo area located in the vicinity of Kinshasa.

WASHINGTON ― The World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved on March 25, 2010 a US$25.5 million grant from the International Development Association (IDA) for the Water, Electricity and Urban Development Project in the Republic of Congo.

WASHINGTON, DC ─ The World Bank has approved a US$50.7 million loan to India, designed to improve quality and sustainability of the core road network in the state of Tamil Nadu. This funding is additional financing to the Tamil Nadu Road Sector Project, which became effective on October 31, 2003, with a loan amount of US$348 million.

Sana'a — The Yemen Social Fund for Development Phase IV project has been approved by the World Bank Board of Directors on March 30, 2010 for the amount of US$60.0 million.

The global crisis has taken its toll on Italy's economy, exacerbating long-standing structural weaknesses and causing the worst recession since WWII. The banking system has weathered the crisis relatively well. The authorities have appropriately resisted pressure for a large discretionary fiscal stimulus, thus containing fiscal deficits, and have taken prompt measures to strengthen safety nets and support the financial sector. These policies have been the right response to the crisis. A modest and fragile recovery based on external demand is now under way. Going forward, it will be essential to maintain fiscal discipline, reduce the burden of public debt, and implement structural reforms aimed at raising the economy's growth potential.

New York: The United Nations human rights office is urging that Afghanistan's poor be at the centre of decision-making processes that affect their lives, after a new report found that rights abuses are exacerbating poverty in the country.

Is the Bharatiya Janata Party pathologically obsessed with proving that it is the odd man out of Indian politics, committed to a uniquely sectarian and divisive agenda, wayward behaviour and a confrontationist style? Going by last fortnight's developments, that would seem so. First, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi again demonstrated his disdain for Constitutional values and the law by responding in an ambivalent and conditional manner to the summons issued by the Special Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme Court to probe into the Gujarat pogrom of 2002.

The BJP must have learnt by now that the political and legal systems follow different and even contradictory trajectories. Events which yield political dividends can prove to be legally embarrassing after some time. Neither L.K. Advani nor Narendra Modi would have thought that the developments which they had enthusiastically hailed and perhaps also secretly orchestrated could become millstones round their own and their party's necks in course of time.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today completed the third review of Armenia's economic performance under a program supported by a Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). The decision enables the immediate release of an amount equivalent to SDR 48.485 million (about US$73.6 million), bringing total disbursements so far an amount equivalent to SDR 350.425 million (about US$532.2 million).

New York: The United Nations-supported mine action centre in Afghanistan destroyed nearly 112,000 different types of explosives in the first two months of this year and could do much more with additional funding, one of its top officials said today ahead of next week's International Mine Action Day.