KENYA: Inflation Deflates New Year Joy

Kenyans entered the New Year with less pomp and colour that has characterised previous new year celebrations. Due to the harsh economic situation and the fact that it is time for most students to go back to school, many families shied away from entertainment places to save that elusive shilling for their school-going children.

PORTUGAL: No Jobs? Just Emigrate!

Hounded by the economic crisis that shows no signs of letting up and by political leaders of all stripes, Portugal's conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho sent out an unprecedented message to his fellow citizens: emigrate.

MEXICO: Youth on the Front Lines of Protest Movement

"We need to be the ones to provide the answers to the questions of our times, because we are the main victims of the voracious policies of capitalism," says Alexis Jiménez, a 23-year-old ethnologist who has spent the last two months camping out in front of the Mexico City Stock Exchange.

PORTUGAL: All-Out Privatisation Gets Underway

The most far-reaching programme of privatisation of state enterprises in the history of Portugal kicked off Thursday with the sale of almost all of the state's shares in the Energias de Portugal (EDP) utility to China's Three Gorges Corp.

R&D Weathers the Crisis

Research and development, unlike other branches of productive activity, is resisting the ravages of one of the worst financial and economic crises to affect the world in the last 80 years.

ECONOMY: Argentina Shows World How to Beat the Crisis

What is happening in the European Union and the United States today happened a decade ago in Argentina, when it was a hotbed of protest and the streets of major cities were seething with people telling their leaders they had had enough. And then a new story began to be written.

U.S.: Foreign Aid Spared Drastic Cuts for 2012

Despite the budget cutting and anti-U.N. frenzy that seized Republican lawmakers over the past year, U.S. foreign aid and support for multilateral institutions emerged in somewhat better shape than many observers had expected.

U.S.: Protestors Occupy Ports in Oakland and Beyond

Occupy movements in Oakland, California; Portland, Oregon; and Longview, Washington claimed victory Monday when they prevented workers from loading or unloading ships at the three ports.

Forging Bond Will Be Test for Co-ops and Occupy Movement

Canadian cooperatives may grow as the global Occupy movement raises the profile of their business model through boosting interest in credit unions over traditional banks, but uncertainty remains about the degree to which the two camps will join forces from here on.

U.S.: Homeless Play Key Role in Occupy Movement

Homeless people make up a significant proportion of participants in the Occupy Movement in cities across the United States, from Los Angeles to Atlanta, where at times they comprise an estimated third of the occupiers.

TUNISIA: Neo-Liberalism the Issue, Not Islam

On the verge of officially forming a coalition government to run the country and rewrite the nation's pre-revolution constitution, Tunisia's dominant, Islamist political party Ennahda has come under fire for its economic neo-liberalism, both from opponents and from coalition partners.

Brussels Summit Rejects EU-Wide Treaty Change

A bid to change the EU treaty to resolve the eurozone debt crisis has foundered at a crunch summit in Brussels, after Britain refused to sign up without major concessions in return.

HUNGARY: ‘Unorthodoxy’ Fails, IMF Returns

A year after slamming the door on the International Monetary Fund and announcing that a small country like Hungary could pursue an independent economic policy, conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been forced to kneel to the IMF and ask for help. Was there ever an alternative?

U.S.: Occupy Targets Foreclosures

Five months ago, Gayla Newsome was at work when she got the call. A sheriff had come to her home of 15 years and put her two pajama-clad daughters out on the curb of her West Oakland street. Newsome knew the bank was about to foreclose, but thought she still had time to fight it.

DEVELOPMENT: In Crisis, The Rich Get Richer

Mansions on one side of the road, and slums on the other. People queuing for food rations, while others drive by in shiny Land Rovers with tinted windows.

OP-ED: Occupy Foreign Affairs

It's not the topic of George Packer's latest essay that's particularly surprising. Inequality, he writes, is undermining democracy. Progressives have been hammering home this message for years if not decades.

Listening to ‘Appalled Economists’

A paper written by a handful of French economists criticising the economic policies applied in the European Union to deal with the sovereign debt crisis that followed government bailouts of banks and other financial institutions in 2007 has become a manifesto supported by many worldwide.

US-EU: Economic Crisis Threatens Global Recession, U.N. Warns

The United Nations Thursday reaffirmed a lingering fear haunting Western capitals: the world economy is teetering on the brink of another major downturn and heading towards a global economic recession.

U.S.: States Seek Drug Tests for Welfare Recipients

At least 36 states across the U.S. are proposing laws that would require applicants for and recipients of a variety of public aid programs to undergo drug testing in which they would have to provide a urine sample. Several states, including Arizona, Florida, Indiana and Missouri, have already passed such laws.

SPAIN: Self-Financed Communities “A Tool for Building Trust”

On the first Sunday of every month, Abdoulaye Fall, from Senegal, meets a group of people in Barcelona, to contribute money to a common fund or to take out a loan. This is one of 60 self-financed communities in Spain, an alternative to traditional banking systems that is having a powerful social effect.

EUROPE: Crisis Brings New Governments, Not New Politics

The change of government in five countries in Europe, brought about this year by the dramatic sovereign debt crisis that broke out in 2007 has so far failed to remove the original causes of the crisis.