THE generous Budget unveiled yesterday, with $20.5 billion in recession-targeted spending, will probably add between 1 and 2 percentage points to Singapore's economic performance this year.

But economists said this has already been factored into their negative growth forecasts and will not pull the nation out of recession. Even with the record deficit this year, the economy is officially tipped to shrink between 2 and 5 per cent.

NEW DELHI - INDIA banned imports of toys from China on Friday in an apparent bid to shield domestic manufacturers from cheap imports.

'This restriction will remain in force for a period of six months,' said an official from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, which imposed the ban.

NEW DELHI - A TOP Indian government panel cut its growth forecast for Asia's third-largest economy on Friday, blaming a battering from the global slowdown, and its chief said there was room for more cuts in interest rates.

In its review of the economy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Economic Advisory Council said expansion would slow to 7.1 per cent for the current fiscal year to end March, from a previous estimate of 7.7 per cent.

DENDERMONDE (Belgium) - A MAN armed with a knife went on a rampage at a child day-care centre in Belgium on Friday, killing two children and an adult, a local prosecutor said.

Eleven children were also wounded 'some of them seriously', according to local prosecutor Christian Du Four, when the man, who had his face painted black and white, ran amok in the creche in the town of Dendermonde, northwest of Brussels.