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All countries need to trade, with their neighbours and globally, to sustain long-term economic growth. Some low-income countries lack the instutitions, infrastructure and supply side capacity to benefit from open markets and lift their people out of poverty.

comScore, Inc. released a study of the social networking category in Russia, based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. The study found Russia to have the world's most engaged social networking audience, with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month.

The World Bank Group committed $58.8 billion in fiscal year 2009 to help countries struggling amid the global economic crisis, a 54 percent increase over the previous fiscal year and a record high for the global development institution.

The number of doctors per capita increased 2% per year on average across OECD countries between 1990 and 2007, but in some countries the trend is reversing.

Consumer prices in the OECD area rose by 0.1 % in the year to May 2009, compared with 0.6 % in the year to April, continuing the sharp fall in annual inflation since its peak of 4.9% in July 2008. Month-on-month, prices rose by 0.2% in May, unchanged from April 2009.

The economic crisis is likely to cause the first major fall in the number of migrants coming to work in OECD countries since the 1980s, according to a new OECD report. This is already happening, for example, in Ireland, Spain and the UK, which were among the countries first hit by the downturn.

Fitch Ratings says in a new report that the global economy has likely stopped shrinking and will slowly begin to recover during the second half of this year. However, economic recovery will be anaemic and unemployment will continue to rise through most of next year and, consequently, the world's major central banks are not expected to begin raising policy interest rates until late 2010 at the earliest.

Global purchases of IT goods and services by businesses and governments in 2009 are projected to decline by 10.6 percent when measured in US dollars, compared with the 3 percent decrease previously projected at the beginning of the year by Forrester Research, Inc..

While the term "data-stealing malware" is a relatively new one, its sole purpose for existence is a familiar story: To steal proprietary information such as online banking credentials, credit card numbers, social security numbers, passwords, and more from compromised networks and PCs in order to fuel an underground cyber crime economy driven by profit-seeking criminal networks that cross geopolitical boundaries.

Following a year-long period of exceptional volatility in 2008, the world's population of high net worth individuals (HNWIs(1)) was down 14.9 percent from the year before and the population of ultra high net worth individuals (Ultra-HNWIs(2)) fell 24.6 percent, according to the 13th annual World Wealth Report, released by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini. The decrease in population was matched by a 19.5 percent drop in HNWI wealth to $32.8 trillion. The unprecedented declines wiped out two years of robust growth in 2006 and 2007, reducing both the HNWI population and its wealth to below levels seen at the close of 2005.