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Ivanka Trump has been involved in discussions with the World Bank about establishing a funding operation that would support female entrepreneurs, bank and administration officials said Wednesday. The officials stressed that nothing has been set up yet and that talks are ongoing about how this would be set up. They said it could be structured as a World Bank-run "facility," which accepts contributions from governments and private donors and then provides funding and support to women in developing countries. According to a senior administration official, Trump recently pitched the idea to World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, who then...

Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz criticized Puerto Rico’s new fiscal plan on Thursday, saying that its “draconian” austerity measures are the worst he has ever seen and could plunge the U.S. territory into an even deeper depression. The former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank spoke to a gathering of more than 1,000 people in San Juan. Stiglitz said the 10-year fiscal plan approved last month by a federal control board created by U.S. Congress is based on the wrong principles and erroneously puts creditors first. […] Puerto Rico is preparing to implement austerity measures that...

As the new year dawns, it seems the current occupant of St. Peter’s Chair will take on a new function which is outside the purview of the office that the Divine Founder of his institution had clearly mandated. Besides being a self proclaimed expert on global warming and a vociferous advocate of societal-wrecking mass immigration, it looks as if “Pope” Francis has entered the realm of global economics specifically, international monetary policy. In an 18-page document issued through the Vatican’s Office of Justice and Peace, Bergoglio has called for, among other repressive and wealth-destructive measures, the establishment of a “supranational...

On Monday, Bret Stephens wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Doomed to Stagnate.” The article was predicated on a little-known annual survey by the World Bank known as “Doing Business,” a document that ranks the business climate of nearly every nation around the world. Most Americans might expect the largest capitalist economy in the world, the United States, to lead the pack — but they’d be wrong. In fact, most Americans might be surprised to learn that not only are we not on top, but we have become less economically competitive in the world since Obama took...

After weeks of uncertainty and foot-dragging, the Appeals Court this week made a critical ruling, setting the stage for a potential shakeup in Turkish politics that may block President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s drive for an executive presidency. The court gave the green light for the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) to hold a convention requested by in-house dissidents seeking to remake the party, whose erosion in recent years has played directly into Erdogan’s hands. Leading the dissidents is Meral Aksener, a rare female heavyweight on Turkey’s political scene, whose fortunes may now change not only the MHP’s but also Turkey’s course.

Mr Zoellick, 58, will leave the Bank on June 30, after five years in the role. "The Bank is now strong, healthy and well positioned for new challenges, and so it is a natural time for me to move on and support new leadership," he said. Speculation as to his successor has focused on Mrs Clinton, the US Secretary of State, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. The former US First Lady is said to have been in discussions with the White House about leaving her current role. "Hillary Clinton wants the job," a source who knows her well told...

Partial results in Peru's presidential election give former World Bank executive Pedro Pablo Kuczynski a narrow lead. He had 50.59% against 49.41% for Keiko Fujimori, with 52% of the votes counted. Ms. Fujimori had a strong lead ahead of the vote on Sunday but corruption scandals in her Popular Force party may have dented her support. She is the daughter of Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori.......

How a Soviet mole in FDR's inner circle triggered Pearl Harbor – and its dire relevancy to our conflict today. ... On December 7, 1941, 353 Japanese aircraft delivered a shocking blow .. Nearly seven years later, Harry Dexter White, a senior official in the Roosevelt Administration, appeared to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities . Numerous witnesses, including Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, had implicated White in involvement with the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. ... Harry Dexter White, a Harvard PhD and Assistant Treasury Secretary, had played a major role in creating the World Bank...

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The number of people living in extreme poverty is likely to fall for the first time below 10 percent of the world's population in 2015, the World Bank said on Sunday as it revised its benchmark for measuring the problem. Extreme poverty has long been defined as living on or below $1.25 a day, but the World Bank's adjustment now sets the poverty line at $1.90 a day. The Bank said the change reflects new data on differences in the cost of living across countries, while preserving the real purchasing power of the previous...

It is an obvious truth we too often forget. At the Albert Einstein Memorial, on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., an explanatory sign states a simple fact that refutes the argument President Barack Obama's science adviser once made for redistributing wealth and limiting human population so as to save the human race from a poverty he claimed must inevitably intensify as our numbers increase. "At Einstein's feet lies a circular sky map representing the planets, sun, moon, and stars, positioned as observed by astronomers from the U.S. Naval Observatory at noon on the day...

Mike Bird March 31, 2015China's new development bank, which was announced just five months ago, is becoming a massive headache for the US. Try as it might, the US government can't convince its allies to stop joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The bank will be a bit like the World Bank, providing loans to developing countries in Asia for infrastructure projects. Unlike the World Bank, China will hold the reins of the AIIB. The US administration is publicly worried that the institution won't meet high governance standards, but really seems opposed to the move because it signals a...

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble confirmed on Tuesday that Germany has agreed to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), despite pressure from the US.Germany, France and Italy “want to bring our long experience … to help the bank build a solid reputation,” Schäuble said at a joint press conference in Berlin with Chinese vice-premier Ma Kai. “We want to make a contribution to the positive development of the Asian economy, in which German companies are actively taking part,” he said. France and Italy have also agreed to become members of the $50-billion institution, seen as a rival to the...

Suspected dissidents disappear after midnight visits to their homes; chilling screams can again be heard from Idi Amin's infamous torture chambers, reopened after a quarter of a century of disuse. From the few that escape come tales of punishment beatings and even mass executions. Welcome to President Yoweri Museveni's Uganda. One of Britain's favourite African states in recent years has, almost unnoticed in the West, become a sinister land where a corrupt regime uses its secret police to rule through fear. The reasons for this transition are not hard to fathom. Mr Museveni has ruled Uganda since 1986, when his...

Victoria Nuland, U.S. secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said the U.S. has been internally preparing more financial support to Ukraine.“Senior IMF leadership was in Ukraine this week issuing a public validation of the reform program going forward but also confirming that the program agreed last year is going to need a significant adjustment – that there is a fiscal hole to the tune of $10-15 billion,” Nuland said at the American Enterprise Institute during a discussion examining the Ukrainian revolution one year later.“We expect that the IMF and the World Bank will have to increase their support...

The world is locked into 1.5°C global warming, posing severe risks to lives and livelihoods around the world, according to a new climate report commissioned by the World Bank. The report, which called on a large body of scientific evidence, found that global warming of close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times – up from 0.8°C today – is already locked into Earth's atmospheric system by past and predicted greenhouse gas emissions. Such an increase could have potentially catastrophic consequences for mankind, causing the global sea level to rise more than 30 centimeters by 2100, droughts to become more severe and...

here was no knife recovered at the scene, leading officials to suspect the death was not a suicide, and they were trying to determine who had access to his apartment. One-bedroom apartments at the building are listed at more than $1 million.

Fighting climate change would help grow the world economy, according to the World Bank, adding up to $2.6tn (£1.5tn) a year to global GDP in the coming decades. The findings, made available in a report on Tuesday, offer a sharp contrast with claims by the Australian government that fighting climate change would “clobber” the economy. The report also advances on the work of economists who have argued that it will be far more costly in the long run to delay action on climate change. Instead, Tuesday's report found a number of key policies – none of which included putting an...

Development programs run by the World Bank and other multilateral agencies regularly fail because they rely on government aid rather than the free market, New York University economist William Easterly said recently at the Cato Institute. william easterly For example, Easterly recounted, in a World Bank-backed forestry program in Uganda, farmers were forcibly removed from their farms and relocated to cities. He said, “The result of this, this is the tyranny of experts at its most extreme.” Similarly, experts cannot shake their belief that somewhere there is a “benevolent autocrat” they can assist. Easterly noted that in Ethiopia under former...

Last week a World Bank report that compares something called purchasing power parity claimed that, based on the purchasing power statistics, the Chinese economy has reached a point of rough equality with the United States, or, could actually have moved slightly ahead of the USA, based on the incomplete figures of economic growth over the last three years. This announcement, which confirms the fact of China’s explosive economic development, and the anemic American recovery after the Great Recession of 2008-2010, has caused quite a stir in a number of quarters. The Chinese, usually quick to tout great achievements, have been...

The fine dining establishments of Knightsbridge and the Champs Elysees may soon be serving their well-to-do customers Ukrainian chicken. Backed by a $50 million IFC loan, Ukraine’s leading poultry producer is set to expand into European markets, and perhaps beyond. IFC is supporting the expansion of long-time client Myronivskiy Hliboproduct, or MHP, while helping the fast-growing company build the greenest farming operation in the country. "When I started my poultry business back in the 1990s, there was practically no market in the country for our fresh chickens,” says Yuri Kosyuk, MHP founder and chairman. “After my study tours abroad I...