Central bankers and finance ministers need to take "essential actions" to help financial markets "regain their footing in the aftermath of serious dislocations" in credit markets, according to the world's leading financial institutions

  Zoellick's deputy reinforces message that bank has emerged from the Wolfowitz scandal ready to play a dynamic role in development

  US home foreclosures doubled last month from a year ago and the nation's biggest mortgage lender said late payments rose, suggesting that the mortgage crisis is not abating

  The International Energy Agency, the western countries' energy watchdog, has warned of rapidly falling crude oil and products inventories ahead of the peak demand winter season

  Robert Zoellick set out his vision for the World Bank as a "catalyst" for private and public action to extend the benefits of global integration to the poor and in doing so make globalisation more "inclusive and sustainable"

  A hundred days is too short for transforming the world. But it's long enough for a new leader to decide where to take the World Bank

  Smart growth is not about impressing financial markets. It is finding the right corridor, write Georg von Krogh and Sebastian Raisch

  British novelist Doris Lessing has won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature with judges calling her an 'epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny'

  Help from rich governments to the developing world has marginally improved but is still held back by policies on global warming, migration and security, according to a study by a leading think-tank

  Asia's smaller export outfits are struggling as the region's currencies rally against an ever-weakening US dollar

  The International Monetary Fund has cut its estimate for global growth next year but still expects the world economy to grow at 4.8 per cent, according to Italian press reports

  The economies of eastern Europe are vulnerable to a reversal of the surge of private capital that has poured into emerging markets in recent years, the International Monetary Fund says in its latest World Economic Outlook analysis

  Development aid is not all about the money, a lesson worth remembering in the UK given its miserly performance on admitting immigrants and its shameful habit of selling arms to poor countries with records of corruption

  Gerhard Ertl, a German scientist, won the Nobel prize for chemistry for his research into the reactions that take place on solid surfaces, which play an essential role in the chemicals industry.