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MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $250 million loan to expand the coverage and quality of water supplies to nearly 11 million people in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s fast-growing capital city.

“The city is struggling to meet the water needs of its booming population, and, more worryingly, its groundwater is rapidly depleting,” said Norio Saito, Principal Urban Development Specialist with ADB’s South Asia Department. “This assistance will allow Dhaka’s water authority to improve facilities and tap a new water source to take pressure off existing supplies.”

Johannesburg — The combined effects of the global economic slowdown and increasing climatic shocks are threatening food security in developing countries, prompting many to re-open World Trade Organization (WTO) discussions on limits to support for farmers.

A group of developing countries - known as G33 - is asking to exceed their agreed domestic support limits when they buy, stock and supply cereals and other food to boost food security among the poor; they want these changes to be exempt from any legal challenge.

Climate change will lead to more flooding and drought in East Asia and could chop 5.3 percent off annual gross domestic product by the year 2100 if measures aren't adopted to tackle it, according to the Asian Development Bank.

Rising temperatures in China, Japan, Mongolia and South Korea will spur more flooding and tropical storms in coastal areas and make northern agricultural regions more prone to drought, the ADB said today in its “Economics of Climate Change in East Asia” report.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has appealed to Washington to sort out its finances after the US pulled back from the brink of a debt default and hundreds of thousands of federal employees prepared to return to work after a 16-day government shutdown.

As the US president, Barack Obama, warned: "We've got to get out of the habit of governing by crisis," the IMF's managing director, Christine Lagarde, appealed for more stability.

"It will be essential to reduce uncertainty surrounding the conduct of fiscal policy by raising the debt limit in a more durable manner," she said.

WASHINGTON, October 15, 2013 – The World Bank has signed an agreement with Coursera, a leading provider of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), to help meet the demand for practical solutions-oriented learning on pressing issues in developing countries. Ending extreme poverty within a generation and boosting shared prosperity among the bottom 40 percent of the population in developing countries are the goals guiding the World Bank Group’s work.

It was impossible to find anybody at last week's meeting of the International Monetary Fund willing to believe that the US will actually default on its debts. The universal belief was that the game of chicken would end before Thursday's deadline for raising the debt ceiling, if perhaps only at the eleventh hour.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has trimmed its forecast for global economic growth at the same time as lifting its UK growth projection.

It now expects global growth of 2.9% this year, a cut of 0.3% from July's estimate. In 2014 it expects global growth of 3.6%, down 0.2%.

It cited weakness in emerging economies for the cut.

The forecast for UK growth this year received a significant upgrade to 1.4%, up from July's estimate of 0.9%.

And for next year the IMF expects UK growth of 1.9%, up from July's projection of 1.5%.

The International Monetary Fund cut its global outlook for this year and next as capital outflows further weaken emerging markets and warned that a U.S. government default could “seriously damage” the world economy.

Shares in New York fell sharply on Thursday after the US Treasury warned that the budget fight between Republicans and Democrats in Washington risked plunging the world's biggest economy into its worst slump since the Great Depression.

President Barack Obama turned up the pressure on Republicans on Capitol Hill after the Treasury and the International Monetary Fund joined senior Wall Street figures in urging a deal well ahead of the deadline for raising America's debt ceiling on 17 October.

A slowdown in China and India is reverberating across the region with the Asian Development Bank forecasting expansion at a four-year low this year, putting pressure on policy makers to bolster their economies.

Developing Asia, which excludes Japan, will probably expand 6 percent in 2013 and 6.2 percent next year, the Manila-based lender said in a report today. Growth this year will match the pace in 2009, according to the ADB. In July, it had forecast expansion of 6.3 percent this year and 6.4 percent in 2014.