IMF warns Belarus

In a stern warning to Belarus, the IMF called for urgent and far-reaching policy adjustments to reverse damage to the economy from recent public wage increases, over-spending by the government on housing, agriculture and other sectors, and foreign currency borrowing from domestic banks.

Related Link:  Republic of Belarus and the IMF

The Baidu Story

Wang Mengqiu is a woman who has found opportunity in Baidu. She holds a unique position - vice president of search technologies for Baidu.

The End of Business Cards

Ever since the arrival of electronic communication, people have been exploring new ways to share information with each other- from swapping email addresses to trading mobile phone numbers and, increasingly, connecting through an online social network. A range of services have appeared to take advantage of this trend, including Bump Technologies, a two-year-old startup based in California's Silicon Valley.

Its application, which users download to their phones, lets people trade contact details simply by tapping their handsets together. It's an approach that has a number of advantages over the traditional paper card - particularly since nobody goes anywhere without their mobile these days.

Sweden and Somalia - Corners of Corruption

The world is a more corrupt place now than it was three years ago, a poll suggests. In the Transparency International survey, political parties were regarded as the most corrupt institutions with 80% of people regarding them as corrupt. Religious bodies experienced a sharp rise in people regarding them as corrupt - 28% in 2004 increased to 53% by 2010. The opinion poll commissioned by the BBC sampled 13,000 people in 26 nations.

Brand India profits from celebrity boost

Companies in India pay huge amounts to get celebrity endorsments for their brand.But, does a star backer really mean a company will make it big?

Snow hits UK online deliveries

Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda have suspended deliveries, after last week's wintry weather brought the transport network to a standstill. Many are struggling to cope with backlogs.

Amazon hit by web service failure

Amazon sites ending .it, .de, .uk, .fr and .at - which are all hosted in Dublin - were unavailable for about half an hour at about 2115 GMT on Sunday, according to a Twitter posting by web monitoring firm Netcraft. A group of cyber activists, Anonymous, is hitting firms that withdrew services from whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks. However, were no clear indications that Anonymous was responsible for the disruption to Amazon.