India's progress is being halted by opponents of a landmark nuclear deal with the US that could significantly boost a sector vital to the country's future, according to the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

  New York and London set aside their fierce rivalry as Michael Bloomberg, New York city mayor, hosted talks with City of London officials and Treasury secretary Hank Paulson on how to reduce regulatory barriers between the two financial centres

  Peter Costello, the Australian treasurer, has sought to dissuade the country's central bank from raising interest rates, arguing that Australia would face a financial "tsunami" should China ever float its currency

  An influential Democratic senator has written to Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, demanding reforms to make the organisation more transparent

  The Last Tycoons, an account of the investment bank's evolution, beats Greenspan's memoir-cum-sermon to FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award

  The world's largest financial institutions said they wanted to fashion a response to the credit crisis before policymakers stepped in with regulation

  Reckless practices and bad management – but rigid transparency rules are not the answer, says Europe's internal market commissioner

  World economic growth is being jeopardised by environmental degradation, scientists warn, although the rate at which the environment is despoiled may be slowing

  Worries that industrialised nations will impose greenhouse gas cuts will be a stumbling block at the UN climate change talks, officials warn

  Washington's concerns over the passage of a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia have led to a renewed push to gain support for it, by taking congressmen to Colombia to see the progress made with the help of US funding

  Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, threw his weight behind plans to turn Mumbai into an international financial centre in a speech ahead of his first official visit to India later this week.

  Cheap food is an open-ended fiscal commitment – once in place it is politically impossible to withdraw – that can play havoc with a budget

  Acute labour shortages are prompting all governments in Scandinavia to let in eastern neighbours to work – but unions and parties of both left and right are wary

  The fundamental nature of the gas trade between the EU and Russia is changing fast, and both parties should begin to depoliticise what is essentially a commercial relationship that requires confidence, write Daniel Yergin and Simon Blakey