Top emerging economies joined forces to slam Europe's obsolete grip on the IMF top job, even as France's finance minister appeared to strengthen her lead in the race to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
UK's credit rating has been cut by the Dagong rating agency of China. The agency blamed the UK's sluggish growth, which it said would be stuck in the 1.3%-1.5% range for two more years, hurting government finances.
Israel's Finance Ministry has approved funding for the construction of the largest water desalination plant in the world. Under construction in Sorek, central Israel, the plant is scheduled to be completed in 2013 at a cost of 400 million US dollars.
Brazil which gets about 80% of its energy from hydroelectricity is considering a record investment of 4.1 billion Real (2.5 billion USD) for wind farms this year to diversify its power supply.
The Group of 20 (G20) largest economies are largely keeping their pledges to avoid protectionism as a reaction to the recent global recession, but the rest of the world is increasing trade barriers, a new report co-authored by the UN said Tuesday.
A new report from the anti-corruption organization Transparency International (TI), shows no improvement in the enforcement of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in the past year and warns that this could signal a dangerous loss of momentum in the fight against corruption.