HEALTH-AUSTRALIA: Focus on Drug Access at HIV/AIDS Meet

Delegates at a major international conference on HIV and AIDS, set to unfold here on Sunday, are expected to urge the developed countries to help guarantee the supply of affordable drugs to combat the virus and the syndrome.

DEVELOPMENT: EU Confronts Its Unhealthy Policy

The European Union's only directly elected institution is at loggerheads with the bloc's 27 governments over a measure officially designed to ensure that poor countries have access to affordable medicines.

FINANCE-US: Fed Chief Downplays Effect of Yuan on Deficit

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told the U.S. Congress Wednesday that the global economy was growing at a strong pace bolstered by rising consumerism and demand, but the U.S. trade deficit with the world remained at a high level despite a sliding dollar.

TRADE: Developing Countries Resist New Pressures

Several developing countries said Wednesday they will oppose a steep down payment being demanded from them in market access commitments for industrial goods as proposed in a compromise draft text to revive the troubled Doha trade negotiations.

TRADE: WTO Offers New Proposal to Break Deadlock

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) proposed a new plan Tuesday to unlock global trade talks that have stalled over farm subsidies in rich countries and reluctance by poor nations to further open their markets for Western goods and services without reciprocation from industrialised nations.

FINANCE-US: Congress Reins in Foreign Investors

The U.S. Congress passed legislation this week that strengthens the vetting system for foreign purchases of companies in the U.S., a measure that observers say will mostly likely lead other countries to tighten their rules as well.

TRADE: US Complains to WTO as Deficit with China Creeps Up

Just hours after new data showed an ever-widening U.S. trade deficit with China, Washington asked the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Thursday to arbitrate its dispute with Beijing over what Washington considers illegal trade subsidies.

TRADE: EU Policies &#39Predatory&#39

The European Union's trade policy has been condemned as "predatory" by a leading anti-poverty campaigner from India.

DEVELOPMENT: New Partnership Needed to Achieve MDGs

A "new partnership" between rich and poor countries is required if the United Nations goals of reducing extreme poverty by 2015 are to be realised, according to an official who helped devise those objectives.

DEVELOPMENT: New EU Head Portugal to Focus on Africa

Portugal, the new holder of the European Union's rotating presidency, has promised that Africa will be one of its key priorities for the next six months.

POLITICS: "Take The Bull By the Horns And Move Towards a New Country – Africa"

Positions are being staked out concerning the establishment of a pan-African government, this at the annual summit of the African Union (AU), underway in Accra. Heads of state and government from around the continent began meeting in the Ghanaian capital Sunday; they will wrap up talks Tuesday.

AFRICA: Food for 12 Billion. So Why Did 854 Million Go Without?

"As you are suffering from over-consumption, I am suffering from under-consumption. We need to strike a balance," said Mary Wahu Kaara from the Kenya Debt Relief Network with reference to the North and the South.

DEVELOPMENT: When Education Is Not So Sweet

A major Belgian retail firm has been accused of misleading its customers by implying that its sales of Malawian sugar will benefit education projects in that country.

SOUTH AMERICA: AIDS Meds for All, But at Higher Prices

In under a decade, programmes providing universal free access to antiretroviral medicines have greatly decreased AIDS mortality in countries like Argentina and Brazil, but this progress is now threatened by the rising prices of new formulas patented by the big pharmaceutical companies.

MERCOSUR: Asymmetry Sets the Agenda

While they wait for the right time to resume negotiations with the European Union, the member countries of Mercosur are focusing on mechanisms to counterbalance the comparative disadvantages experienced by its smaller economies with respect to its two largest ones.

DEVELOPMENT: G8, G5 Or G4? A Tough Choice for India

India, which was invited to the G8 summit at Heiligendamm in Germany as one of five 'outreach' nations from the global South, is disillusioned with the countries of the North. It is toying with a proposal by another 'outreach' member, Brazil, to constitute a new select group that meets independently of the G8.

TRADE: South Shows Its Muscle

The high-profile Potsdam meeting of the Group of Four members - the United States, the European Union, Brazil and India - broke down on "North-South" lines Thursday when the two developing countries thwarted sustained attempts by the trans-Atlantic trade partners to undermine the developmental concerns of the developing countries in the Doha Development Agenda trade negotiations.

Q&A: “Too Few African Governments Have Had the Guts to Say ‘No'”

While Kofi Annan was the United Nations' secretary-general, he handpicked Eveline Herfkens to be the executive coordinator of the Millennium Campaign, a body which mobilises support for the achievement of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Herfkens had previously worked as the Dutch minister of international development and as an executive director at the World Bank.

TRADE: Few Tears Over Collapse of Talks

The four trading powers making up the so-called G4 - Brazil, the European Union, India and the United States - passed a hot potato back to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) when they announced Thursday in Potsdam, Germany that negotiations for an agreement which could have kickstarted the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks had collapsed.

TRADE: Fears That G4 Meet Will Shift Burden to Developing World

As trade ministers of the Group of Four - European Union, United States, Brazil and India - launched a make-or-break effort in the Doha Round of negotiations Tuesday in Potsdam, Germany, developing countries worry that their concerns won't be adequately addressed, say trade envoys.

TRADE: NAFTA Claim Dismissed, Dicey Clause Remains

A seven-year legal battle by the U.S. postal carrier United Parcel Service of America (UPS) against Canada, brought under a controversial free trade agreement, has been dismissed, but advocacy groups say a provision that allows corporations to sue for lost profits should be permanently dropped.