Finance & Economics | WPN World People News

Israel, which has a strong reliance on Egyptian natural gas, has been told it will no longer be supplied.

Japan has pledged $7.4 billion in development aid to five Southeast Asia nations in an effort to promote cooperation with countries in the Mekong region.

Russia's state budget deficit forecast for 2012 has been lowered to 0.3 percent of GDP from an earlier estimated 1.5 percent of GDP, and a zero-deficit budget cannot be ruled out, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Sunday.

The head of the International Monetary Fund is upbeat as spring finance meetings in Washington come to a close, with more money for the lending agency to help struggling governments, especially in Europe.

Chinese citizens are increasingly relying on mobile phones as a primary method of communication, according to data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Friday.

Video-sharing site YouTube could be forced to pay a huge royalties bill after a German court ruled that the website must take down copyrighted music clips.

The British mobile service Vodafone has threatened the Indian government with international arbitration over a proposal that could make it liable for billions of dollars of taxes. Pressure is mounting on India to reconsider the proposal, which foreign investors say will deter investment in Asia’s third largest economy.