The Government could nationalise private schools hit by the recession by turning them into state-funded academies, it has been reported.
Norway's state investment fund has blacklisted US firm Textron, owner of top plane-maker Cessna, and Canadian mining firm Barrick Gold. The fund, an ethical investor, sold shares in the firms because Textron makes cluster bombs and because of environmental concerns about Barrick.
Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto Group is selling mining assets in Argentina, Brazil and Canada to Brazilian competitor Vale Doce for 1.6 billion US dollars in an attempt to reduce its 39 billion debt load y 10 billion. The group also admitted it was considering a big equity issue.
Unemployment in the Euro zone countries climbed to 8% in December, the highest in over two and a half years, with the total number of jobless reaching 12.472 million in the Euro zone and 17.911 million in all the 27 EU member states according to a Eurostat study released on Friday
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the world's business and other leaders to use the current economic crisis to launch a global Green New Deal that creates jobs and fights climate change by investing in renewable energy and technological development.
The chairman of one of the world's leading banks headquartered in London, HSBC, Stephen Green has said that the current financial rules must be fundamentally revised as they had deepened the financial crisis.
The global economic crisis is expected to lead to a dramatic increase in the number of people joining the ranks of the unemployed, working poor and those in vulnerable employment, the International Labour Office (ILO) said in its annual Global Employment Trends report released on Thursday.
China admitted the global financial crisis has had a rather big impact on its economy and Russia warned of over relying on the US dollar as a reserve currency, at the major World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Plans to curb climate change by using plankton to draw carbon dioxide into the world's oceans have been boosted.
China set up this week its third Antarctic research station, also the country's first on the continent's inland. Kunlun station was erected at Dome Argus (Dome A), the South Pole's highest icecap at 4,093 metres above the sea level, reports the Beijing press.