POLITICS-US: Bailout Bitterness Tainting Obama’s Broader Agenda

Two months into his term, U.S. President Barack Obama’s ambitious campaign programme for sweeping "change" has been whittled down to a bid for incremental change, with opposition to some of his proposed broad reforms coming from unlikely places.

TRADE: EU Forges Ahead With EPAs Despite Global Crisis

Experts agree the current financial crisis is largely due to economic deregulation. But despite the downturn’s dramatic effects on developing countries, the European Union (EU) is still pushing for the trade liberalisation deals called economic partnership agreements (EPAs) to be signed by African governments.

UKRAINE: Struggling to Find a Saviour

Who will save Ukraine? On the verge of state bankruptcy, the country is considering its options both East and West.

POLITICS-US: Obama Bailout Plan Not the Right’s Cup of Tea

In December of 1773, colonists in Boston - then a town in the British colony of Massachusetts - protested against the British government after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain.

EGYPT: Pyramids may Rise Above the Recession

When tourism officials met at the start of the year to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on Egypt's tourism industry, the prognosis looked bleak. But now, three months into 2009, a better picture is emerging - and some experts believe the battened-down sector can weather the storm.

Q&A: Meltdown a Challenge for HIV/AIDS Programmes

The global financial crisis has created a space for a vigorous debate on the life-prolonging drugs needed for people living with HIV, says Michel Sidibe, the new head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

ECONOMY-SINGAPORE: Perils of Globalisation

This tiny island republic sits on trillions of dollars in foreign reserves. Yet, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a BBC interview this month that his country cannot spend its way out of the economic downturn, until the global economy heals.

ECONOMY-SRI LANKA: Conditions Worsen For Women Workers

Ramani, 26, sits inside her small, dimly-lit boarding house room, cutting vegetables, in this industrial town outside Colombo. She plans to return to her rural village in May to get married.

EUROPE: Cold Breeze Sweeps the East

The region that liked to see itself as the engine of European economic growth and as immune to the global economic crisis is now being pointed to as the next to hit the slump.

LABOUR-MALAYSIA: Hit Foreign Workers First Govt Tells Employers

An official guideline for employers to retrench their foreign workers ahead of local employees has alarmed civil society society groups who fear that indebted migrant workers could be sent home with inadequate compensation.

ECONOMY-US: At Failed Firms, No Bad Deed Goes Unrewarded

Thousands of angry U.S. workers took to the streets Thursday to protest some major banks and insurance companies that have handed out extravagant bonuses on the taxpayers' dime, as the U.S. House of Representatives voted to get some of the bonus money back.

Q&A: ‘‘The Market Is Not God And We Are Not At Its Mercy’’

Churches from South Africa and Germany are critically interrogating neoliberal globalisation in a process that they want to take up to United Nations level and also to their congregations ‘‘to build responsibility among people for what is happening in their world’’.

Q&A: ‘Meltdown Not the Only Crisis in the World’

Muhammad Yunus, who claimed the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize founding Grameen Bank, which has lent out more than six billion dollars to mostly poor women, says the global recession presents a historical opportunity for change.

U.S./LATAM: Economic Crisis May Overwhelm Obama’s Goodwill

For all the goodwill that U.S. President Barack Obama is showing toward Latin America, he may find his efforts overwhelmed by the global economic crisis and growing pressure from labour unions - a key Democratic constituency - opposed to the kind of "free trade'' agreements favoured by his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

ECONOMY-CHINA: Chance to Reform IMF in EU-US Split?

Differences between the United States and Europe over how to restore global economic growth have given rise to speculations here on whether a failure to agree on a grand strategy at the upcoming G20 summit might create room for China to assert its national agenda.

ECONOMY-ASIA: Gains in Poverty Eradication Melt Away

Rosevic Colli’s ambition is to run her own Internet café in her hometown of Davao, southern Philippines. "I don’t want to work for anyone, I want to be my own boss," she says.

EL SALVADOR: Crisis, Poverty Huge Challenges for Leftist President

The main challenges faced by El Salvador's leftwing president-elect Mauricio Funes are forging understandings with other political sectors, adopting measures to deal with the economic crisis, and especially its effects on the poor, and strengthening the country's institutions, say analysts.

AFRICA: A Lot More Needed to Make South-South Trade Work

Trade experts are sceptical about the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s renewed emphasis on South-South trade to counter the global economic crisis.

ECONOMY: Meltdown Holds Mixed Results for South Asia

The global recession will raise the already high incidence of poverty in South Asia on the back of layoffs, decreased foreign aid and dwindling resources for social welfare, say economists and experts.

CLIMATE CHANGE: In Search of a Green Economic Stimulus

The high-level scientific climate conference that concluded last week in Copenhagen warned that humanity is rapidly approaching an irreversible, 1,000-year-long climate catastrophe.

BOTSWANA: Retrenchments Turn Villages Into “Little Hells”

The closure of two major mines and the scaling down of operations at most mines in Botswana have had a knock-on effect beyond miners in this southern African producer of diamonds.