POLITICS: Bush Loses Favour With Latin American Elites

The image of the United States under President George W. Bush has suffered in Latin America, as well as the Islamic world and Europe, according to a survey released by the Zogby International polling firm in cooperation with the Miami Herald and the University of Miami School of Business Administration.

DEVELOPMENT: Least Church-Going Rich Countries Give Most

Nations where fewer people attend church tend to be more generous in their support for development in poor countries than those where church attendance is much greater, according to the third annual edition of the "Commitment to Development Index (CDI)", published this week in Foreign Policy magazine.

HEALTH-MOZAMBIQUE: Local Production of ARVs – Perhaps

With an HIV prevalence of over 12 percent, Mozambique is one of many African countries grappling with the challenge of supplying treatment to citizens who risk succumbing to AIDS-related diseases.

POLITICS-US: Group Slams the "Iron Triangle" of Food Aid

U.S. food aid is inefficient, wasteful and designed in most cases to benefit domestic constituencies, particularly U.S.-based agribusiness firms, shipping companies and some non-governmental organisations (NGOs), more than needy people in developing countries, according to a new report released this week by the Minnesota-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP).

DEVELOPMENT: South Summit to Focus on Forging a United Front

Faced with increasing Western inequities in trade and investments, the world's 132 developing nations will meet in the Qatari capital later this week to adopt a plan of action to strengthen South-South cooperation.

DEVELOPMENT-UGANDA: Little by Little, Week by Week

Uganda is one of Africa's rare success stories in the fight against AIDS, having reduced its HIV prevalence from 30 per cent in the early 1990s to six per cent today. However, the pandemic has still taken a toll on the East African country, causing almost two million children to be orphaned.

POLITICS: The Next Wave of Pan-Africanism

For Jamaican dub poet and Rastafarian Mutabaruka, the question of whether Pan-Africanism is still relevant is almost incomprehensible, so obvious is the answer to him.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Universities That Aren’t Worth the Name

"Glorified secondary schools" is the derisive term coined by Nigerians to describe their country's universities. Classrooms are overcrowded, with many students sitting on the floor during lectures. Libraries lack books, and laboratories are ill-equipped to conduct experiments.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: A Mixed Verdict for Commission’s Report

A "decisive first step" towards making poverty in Africa history, an "exercise to cover up the Iraq war": reactions to the report issued last week by Britain's Commission for Africa have been many and varied.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Moving from Top-Down to Bottom-Up No Easy Process

Urban poverty has a familiar face - the image of the overcrowded and garbage-strewn slum. It may surprise many to hear, then, that three quarters of the world's poorest people - about 900 million persons - live in rural areas.

POLITICS: U.N. Paints Grim Picture of Spreading Crises in Africa

A senior U.N. official warned Thursday that the ongoing conflicts in Africa would continue to have a "devastating impact" on civilians this year - "as it has been for many months, and in some cases, for many years".

POLITICS-U.S.: Voters Hope for Softer, Gentler Second Term

If U.S. President George W. Bush steers his foreign policy in a more multilateralist direction, he will have strong support from both Republican and Democratic voters for doing so, according to a new survey and analysis based on several major polls on foreign-policy attitudes conducted over the last six months.

TSUNAMI IMPACT: Plan to Help World’s Poor Could Be Washed Out

The tsunami disaster that claimed the lives of over 150,000 people in south and southeast Asia is also threatening to derail the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - including a lofty plan to reduce by half the number of people living in poverty worldwide.

TSUNAMI IMPACT: Bush Belatedly Ramps Up Disaster Response

Amid a growing debate over whether the U.S. is "stingy" in its aid to poor countries, President George W. Bush moved quickly over the New Year's weekend to demonstrate his concern over the plight of the survivors of last Sunday's tsunamis that killed at least 150,000 people across the Indian Ocean.

TSUNAMI IMPACT: UN, Relief Groups Fear Aid Falling Behind Pledges

The United Nations - along with international aid agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) - is expressing scepticism over the eventual delivery of the hefty 2.5 billion dollars in pledges made by donors for tsunami disaster relief operations in south and southeast Asia.

U.S.: Bush Defensive as Aid Effort Lumbers Into Action

With the South Asian death toll from Sunday's tsunamis well beyond the 100,000 mark and climbing, the administration of U.S. President George W Bush is defending itself against charges that its aid commitments so far have been largely too little, too grudging and too late.

ECONOMY: Urgent Needs Obscure Long-Term Costs of Asian Disaster

The world is rallying to aid countries and lives damaged by the earthquake and tsunamis that have killed more than 120,000 people in Asia and Africa, injuring three or four times as many, but few have ventured to calculate the long-term economic impact of the disaster.

U.S. ELECTION: Africa Barely on the Candidates’ Radars

With U.S. voters anxiously contemplating the body count arising from the United States' deployment in Iraq - as well as the associated threat of terrorism - it was probably to be expected that Africa would get little "face time" in the presidential election.

DEVELOPMENT: Groups Envision End-Poverty Campaign

Buoyed by successful global initiatives to ban landmines and create an international criminal court, a coalition of NGOs plans to launch a worldwide campaign seeking support for ''new and innovative sources of financing'' to help eradicate hunger and poverty.

POLITICS-SOMALIA: The President Without a Capital

When Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was sworn in as Somalia’s new president earlier this month in Kenya, cautious optimism was expressed at the fact that a new chapter appeared to be opening for the embattled East African country.

DEVELOPMENT: An Ambitious Agenda for the Helsinki Process

Their typical day starts at five in the morning or earlier. Balancing a pot on their heads – and sometimes with a baby strapped to their backs – women in rural Africa may walk up to 12 kilometres a day to fetch water.