White Band Action

More HIV/Aids patients in Africa could be treated if funds were switched from expensive laboratory testing to local care in villages, research suggests.

Sri Lanka has agreed a $2.5bn (£1.5bn) loan accord from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the help it weather the global economic crisis.

The agreement will now go the IMF board for final approval.

Reports suggest that an initial $313m will be made available immediately once the loan is approved.

The Sri Lankan government has said that the money will also be used to pay for post-war reconstruction work in the north and east of the island.

'Rebuilding reserves'

Source: Flickr

This week, 4 million more people will go to bed hungry all over the world. Seven out of ten of them are women. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization recently reported that the total number of hungry people worldwide now has topped 1 billion. Today, with high food prices and the global economic crisis, the world's poorest citizens can only afford a third as much staple food as they could three years ago.

There are competing answers, with both sides using statistics from former world-wide sporting events to support their position. The Future Group recently released a report stating that there was a significant risk of increased trafficking into prostitution in Vancouver during the upcoming Olympics. They cite the comparison of the 2004 Athens Olympics, during which the number of trafficking victims identified in Greece doubled.

The defense for Liberia's former President Charles Taylor, on trial for war crimes, is expected to argue he was trying to broker peace rather than foment violence during the 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone.

Taylor, 61, will be the defense's first witness as it begins arguments on Monday and is expected to take the stand for several weeks beginning on Tuesday. He has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

“Ever wanted to ask our Son from Nyangoma any questions? In other words, would you like the American president, Barack Obama to answer your questions?,” begins a post at Hot Secrets blog about Obama's use of new media to engage in a conversation with ordinary Africans.

Speaking to Africans with the intimacy of a brother, and citing the heritage he shared with them, President Barack Obama of the United States delivered an uncompromising message to the continent on Saturday.
Speaking from Ghana's democratically-elected Parliament, months after the ruling party was dislodged – and accepted defeat – by the narrowest of margins, Obama said much of the hope promised by Africa's liberation has yet to be fulfilled.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today that the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions proposed by the world’s largest economies are not deep enough, and warned that much more effort is needed if governments are to reach a meaningful agreement on climate change by the end of the year.

Science has exposed the climate threat and revealed this inconvenient truth: If we burn even half of Earth's remaining fossil fuels we will destroy the planet as humanity knows it. The added emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will set our Earth irreversibly onto a course toward an ice-free state, a course that will initiate a chain reaction of irreversible and catastrophic climate changes.