SEOUL, May 20 (Yonhap) -- The financial regulator said Monday it will expand the debt relief fund designed to help heavy borrowers clear debts to include more possible applicants, taking the program's high demand into account. According to the Financial Services Commission (FSC), the country's top financial regulator, more than 110,000 applicants have so far signed up for the state-run debt relief program, known as the National Happiness Fund.

Hundreds of factories which form the hub of Bangladesh's garment industry are to close indefinitely after worker unrest sparked by the death of more than 1,100 colleagues, employees announced Monday. As the search for bodies from last month's collapse of a factory complex wrapped up, the textile industry's main trade body said all operations at the nearby Ashulia industrial zone were being suspended until further notice.

By Pascal Fletcher JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - After years of headlines about Africa's poverty, its emerging middle class is now grabbing attention as a driver of growth and democracy and an expanding pool of consumers for market-hungry retailers. Consumer demand is a motor of Africa's economic and investment surge, and analysts see middle class buyers with swelling disposable income as fuelling this boom from South Africa to Nigeria and Kenya.

Stellar growth in Africa's economies must be matched by efforts to tackle poverty and protect against less rosy times ahead, the IMF's number two warned Monday. IMF deputy managing director David Lipton said "Africa is beginning to deliver on its economic potential," with sub-Saharan Africa overall expected to grow at 5.4 percent this year. "Africa is changing and the world is noticing," Lipton told an audience in Mozambique's capital Maputo. But, he warned, "there can be no complacency about Africa's current success."