Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s finance minister, is Africa’s standard-bearer in the contest to become World Bank president. Jose Antonio Ocampo, a former Colombian finance minister, is being championed by South America.
Author: WHES
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West
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The future of work: trends and challenges for low-income workers
Many workers are facing uniquely tough times. Though now below its recessionary peak of 10 percent in October 2009, unemployment remains high at 8.2 percent, and job growth is slow. With around 25 million people unemployed or underemployed, it is clear that the jobs crisis did not subside with the official end of the recession. Moreover, workers are still suffering from difficulties that materialized in the decades before the Great Recession, such as deteriorating job quality and stagnant wages. The economic expansion from 2001–2007, for instance, was among the weakest on record; typical family incomes grew by less than one half of one percent between 2000 and 2007 (Bivens 2011). These economic challenges are particularly acute for workers at the bottom of the wage scale.
In pictures: Charles Taylor and the Liberia and Sierra Leone wars
In pictures: Charles Taylor and the Liberia and Sierra Leone wars
Charles Taylor, former Liberian leader, found guilty of war crimes
THE HAGUE — Charles Taylor, the U.S.-educated guerrilla leader who fought his way to the presidency of Liberia, was convicted Thursday of war crimes and crimes against humanity — including murder, rape and slavery — for his role in assisting a bloody rebel movement in neighboring Sierra Leone.
Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai family connections–the close relatives of former Chinese Politburo member Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu Kailai, may have profited from the couple’s political influence
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As China official Bo Xilai rose, his family’s wealth grew
DALIAN, China — Just a few weeks before his dramatic fall from power, Bo Xilai wrote an inscription in calligraphy, praising the Chongqing Water Assets Management Company, and urging support for its operations.
Jim Yong Kim secures World Bank job amid criticism of US domination of role. Seoul-born Kim beats Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who said the decision was not made on merit.
The World Bank named Korean-born doctor Jim Yong Kim as its new president today amid criticism that the role had once more gone to a US-nominated candidate.
Guinea-Bissau premier, front runner, is deposed in a coup
DAKAR, Senegal — A grimly familiar sequence of gunfire in the capital, military communiqués on the radio and the arrest of government officials is repeating itself in the small coastal state of Guinea-Bissau — apparently the latest West African nation to succumb to a coup d’état.
Murder aside, China inquiry puts couple’s wealth on trial
BEIJING — What began as a scandal involving the mysterious death of Neil Heywood, the British businessman whose body was found in November in a Chongqing hotel room, appears to be evolving into a broader investigation into the wealth of a politically powerful Chinese couple, Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu Kailai, and their financial interests.
