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Egypt's government is in the late stages of verifying its economic reform programme with the International Monetary Fund before obtaining a $4.8 billion IMF loan, its central bank governor said on Saturday. The loan, needed to help stabilise Egypt's balance of payments and state finances, has been under discussion for two years but agreement has repeatedly been postponed by political unrest in the country and the government's reluctance to commit to austerity measures.   "The IMF is verifying numbers with the government regarding the programme and they are in late stages of verifying all the numbers," central bank governor Hisham Ramez told reporters after a meeting of regional central bank chiefs in Abu Dhabi on Saturday. There have been no changes to the plan or the amount of aid the country is seeking, he added. "The programme is as it was planned by the Egyptian government. It is $4.8 billion that they have been talking to them about." He said

A court decision to keep a close aide to Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas in custody due to corruption charges is seriously complicating the situation in the ruling coalition, his government partners said on Saturday. _0"> "This piece of information of course significantly changes the situation. It is the first decision, albeit only partial," Petr Gazdik, head of party TOP09's parliamentary club, told Reuters, adding his party leadership would meet on Saturday evening to consider what to do.   Karolina Peake, the head of the second coalition partner LIDEM, a small liberal party, also said the situation "is more serious from hour to hour".

When the heads of the World Bank and the United Nations flew into the violence-wracked African city of Goma on a cloudy day last month, it was the first time the giants of international development had joined forces in the struggle to help the world's most fragile regions. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon traveled to three countries in the Great Lakes region in East Africa to cement a new partnership, tying $1 billion in bank money to the U.N. peacekeeping efforts in the region.   They announced the funding in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), even as mortar shells were falling in the country's eastern edge in Goma. But the men, both born in South Korea, pledged to continue their trip. "We're going there because our belief is that peace, security and economic development are intertwined," Kim said in Kinshasa. "We're going with a very specific purpose in mind: there must be a peac

The coalition partners of Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said they were considering whether they could stay in government with him on Saturday after a court ordered the detention of a close aide to Necas over corruption charges.   A court in the eastern Czech city of Ostrava ruled that Jana Nagyova, who has been in charge of Necas's office for years, be remanded in custody. Prosecutors allege she bribed politicians and illegally ordered intelligence agents to conduct surveillance operations. After the court ruling, an official with TOP09, the bigger of two parties that are in coalition with Necas, said party leaders would meet on Saturday evening to decide what to do about staying in the coalition. Karolina Peake, leader of the second junior partner in the coalition, the small liberal party called LIDEM, told Reuters: "The situation is becoming more serious from hour to hour." Necas's Civic Democrat party alone does not have enough seats in parliament to hold on

Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said a close aide must leave her job as the head of his office after she was charged with corruption and abuse of power and taken into custody on Saturday. _0"> Necas, under growing pressure to resign over the scandal, said in a statement he expected to meet his ruling coalition partners to discuss the political crisis after he returns from a scheduled foreign trip on Sunday.

Turkish riot police fired teargas and water cannon to try to clear protesters from a central Istanbul park on Saturday evening, hours after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan warned that police were ready to intervene. _0"> "We have our Istanbul rally tomorrow. I say it clearly: Taksim Square must be evacuated, otherwise this country's security forces know how to evacuate it," Erdogan had told tens of thousands of supporters at a rally in the capital Ankara.  

Coalition partners of Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said they were considering whether they could stay in government with him on Saturday after a court ordered the detention of his close aide on corruption charges.   A court in the eastern city of Ostrava ruled that Jana Nagyova, who had been in charge of Necas's office for years, be remanded in custody. Prosecutors allege she bribed politicians and illegally ordered military intelligence to spy on people in whom she had a personal interest. The lawyer for another of the eight people charged in the case, head of military intelligence Milan Kovanda, said Kovanda admitted issuing orders for people to be put under surveillance and that one of the subjects of that surveillance had been the prime minister's wife. Necas said earlier this week he and his wife, his college sweetheart, were jointly filing for divorce. The corruption operation threatening the prime minister's job was the biggest in 20 years in the Czech Repub