Shoppers in Shanghai. Photo: Al Jazeera The World Bank released its annual economic report this week, predicting that the global economy will...

APInvestors chat as they check stock price at a private securities company in Shanghai, China.Asian stock markets rose today as investors took a s...

APAn investor walks past a stock price monitor at a private securities company in Shanghai China. Asian stock markets retreated today as China's w...

APInvestors chat in front of a stock price monitor at a private securities company in Shanghai, China. World stock markets rose today as news of a...

LOS ANGELES — The title is "New York, I Love You," and it's a collection of shorts intended as one big love letter to the city and all the romance it has to offer.

The result is a curiously bland hodgepodge – not terribly evocative of such a famous place, and not all that inspiring in the connections it depicts.

Following 2007's "Paris Je T'Aime," this is the second in a planned series of "Cities of Love" films. Each features a group of eclectic directors and well-known actors coming together to concoct brief clips; Rio, Shanghai, Jerusalem and Mumbai are next.

Inherently with such a structure, you're going to have hits and misses. Not all the segments are going to work for every viewer. But whereas "Paris Je T'Aime" had a healthy number of hits, "New York, I Love You" is the unfortunate opposite.

The challenge presented to filmmakers was intriguing, too: Each of them had two days to shoot, then a week to edit. Each short had to take place in an identifiable New York neighborhood. And each had to involve some kind of love encounter.

Obama t-shirt at Shanghai bazaar. Photo: Flickr user Shazari Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria...

Shanghai's 2010 World Expo has forced many from their homes, advocates say. ...

SEOUL, South Korea – Most Asian stock markets fell Thursday amid a big drop in oil prices and as investors worried that support measures for the fragile global economy will be withdrawn too quickly.

The declines came after the Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged at a regular meeting in Washington Wednesday, as widely expected, and said the pace of economic activity has "picked up" since its last meeting in August.

But the Fed also said it said it would again slow some of its purchases of mortgage-backed securities, which have been part of the extraordinary support the central bank has given the U.S. economy over the past year.

Investors have focused on when central bankers and governments will begin to unwind some of the measures they have taken to boost the global economy since the onset of the global financial crisis one year ago.

"I think people get scared when the central bankers talk about the withdrawal from the market," said Francis Lun, general manager at Fulbright Securities Ltd. in Hong Kong "I think investors got coddled by the government for too long."

SHANGHAI, CHINA—In the second such documented case ever, Jinan Huang, a 33-year-old Shanghai woman, gave birth to septuplets Monday.Jinan, who i...

A woman throws a tantrum in a car dealership. Find out if her male companion buys her the car. ...

But while AMD was in Sunnyvale, California, announcing its aggressive chip roadmap, Justin Rattner, Intel Corp.'s chief technology officer, was in Was...

Watch the show from Tuesday, April 21: British homeowner aid, Sri Lanka, Shanghai car show, CITGO-owned island, North Korea, African poverty, Great W...