Because Economics is Sexy...

Russia has imposed a ban on grain exports until the end of the year, after a severe drought and a spate of wildfires devastated crops.
Russia is one of the world’s biggest producers of wheat, barley and rye, and the ban is likely to see bread prices rise in places like the Middle East.
The measures are [...]

Two Jordanian police advisers with the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Sudan’s Darfur region have been abducted by armed men.
The Jordanian government confirmed their capture on Sunday, saying that according to their information, the two were unharmed.
The officers were seized in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state, on Saturday, the Unamid peacekeeping [...]

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has arrived in flood-ravaged Pakistan to discuss relief efforts for the millions of people affected by the worst floods in the country’s history.
Ban was expected to “see for himself the flood-affected areas [and] demonstrate the support of the UN and the international community to the government and people of Pakistan,” [...]

(Reuters) – The U.S. and South Korean militaries will stage their second joint exercise in less than a month from Monday, fuelling tensions with the prickly North and angering regional power China.
The annual exercise comes a week after Seoul completed its own drills near a disputed maritime border off the west coast that prompted the [...]

(Reuters) – A manager at Apple Inc has been charged in California with taking kickbacks he received after leaking corporate secrets to Asian companies that supplied iPhone and iPod accessories, court documents showed.
Paul Shin Devine, a global supply manager at technology company Apple since 2005, was accused by federal authorities of accepting kickbacks from six [...]

The German economy grew by 2.2% in the three months to the end of June, its fastest quarterly growth in more than 20 years, official figures show.
“Such quarter-on-quarter growth has never been recorded before in reunified Germany,” the national statistics office, Destatis, said.
The main reason for the higher-than-expected growth was strong exports, helped by a [...]

The Chinese government has announced a national day of mourning as millions in the country’s west struggle with more rain and the aftermath of mudslides that have killed more than 1,150 people.
Flags were to fly at half-mast on Sunday and public entertainment was to be suspended for the day of mourning to express condolences for [...]

The United Nations has confirmed at least one case of cholera in flood-ravaged Pakistan, where a second wave of water continues to threaten parts of Sindh province.
The cholera case was reported in Mingora, the main town in the northwestern Swat valley, which has seen some of the most extensive damage.
Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the [...]

The number of people found to have contracted AIDS in Japan during the April-June period totaled 129, a record high for a three-month period, a Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare panel said Friday.
The figure included 125 men, according to the AIDS Trend Committee, which also reported 263 people newly infected with the human immunodeficiency [...]

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law a $600 million bill to beef up security on the U.S. border with Mexico, and his aides pressed lawmakers to set aside election-year politics and work toward broader immigration reform.
With illegal immigration seen as a key issue in the November congressional elections, the Obama administration [...]