Creator
Charlotte Denny
Cotton: EU under fire
Agriculture ministers meeting in Brussels this week are facing charges of hypocrisy over their attempts to reform Europe’s subsidised cotton sector, after four African countries…
Ethiopia, Niger debt test cases
Two of Africa’s poorest countries are to receive extra debt relief from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a move Britain hopes will pave the way for a more…
Iraq plan ‘opens door on debt’
The United States’s determination to write off Saddam Hussein’s -billion debt has opened the door to a more generous deal for the most impoverished countries in Africa, the head…
How oil firms fund repression
Major oil companies are still making secret payments to repressive regimes, one year after British Prime Minister Tony Blair put his personal authority behind a British-led…
Wealth gap widening
World leaders must address the ”ethical vacuum” at the heart of globalisation or face the danger that the widening gap between rich and poor will lead to further conflict,…
Sugar lobby fights to keep sweet deal
Britain’s sugar industry is conducting a last-ditch lobbying campaign to prevent Brussels from removing its lucrative virtual monopoly in the high-priced European market in…
Sugar quotas leave bitter taste
Europe is the world’s largest exporter of white sugar, even though it costs twice as much for European producers to grow the stuff as farmers in poor countries. The high prices…
Corporate glossies questioned
Human rights groups and green campaigners believe that companies’ glossy publications extolling their environmental and social record are unsatisfactory, with fewer than half of…
US jobs market bounces back
The United States’s labour market has roared back to life, creating twice as many jobs as expected last month, government figures showed last week, prompting speculation that the…
EU waters down concessions
The European Commission was secretly preparing to sabotage plans to help poor countries trade their way out of poverty, as backstairs wrangling dominated the opening day of the…
US yields ground on cut-price drugs
An eleventh-hour deal to provide cut-price drugs for the world’s poorest people was being finalised in Geneva last week in an effort to save next month’s trade summit in Cancun,…
Worrisome US deficit is ‘manageable’
United States Treasury Secretary John Snow shrugged off concerns about the US’s deficit last week, insisting that a recovery in the world’s largest economy would help close the…
India, China team up to fight trade rules
India and China will challenge the West’s control over global trade rules with a united front at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Cancun this September.
WTO appeals for action on trade talks
Western countries should kickstart deadlocked global trade talks to heal the international diplomatic rifts left by the war in Iraq, Supachai Panitchpakdi, the director of the…
The true cost of oil
Washington’s determination to find an alternative energy source to the Middle East is leading to a new oil rush in sub-Saharan Africa that threatens to launch a fresh cycle of…