News headlines in March 2009

In early March, Amina Ayanna Yusuf strapped her two-year-old son to her back and set off for the Kenyan border with her small savings.

From television screens to the stages of political rallies, candidates for this month’s parliamentary elections in Indonesia are busy bombarding voters with promises of pro-poor programmes. But with the polls just about a week away, many voters say they are still unsure about the kind of leader their country needs today.

The daunting task of making Africa the centre of attention awaits Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi when the Group of 20 (G20) rich and emerging economies meet in London tomorrow.

The international economic system needs a broad overhaul, said a strong majority of 70 percent of respondents to a global poll.

If the draft declaration of the G20 meeting in London is anything to go by, the most specific outcome of this summit is that there will be another one later in the year.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators and interest groups is backing a bill that would end the long economic embargo against Cuba, including travel restrictions to the island.

The initiative linking British chocolate giant Cadbury’s with a Ghanaian cooperative representing 40,000 cocoa farmers is set to grow further and enhance the livelihoods of more farmers.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, is calling for global initiatives to reactivate financial flows to Africa, including government grants, concessional loans and lines of credit.

The brazen armed attack on a police academy near Lahore on Monday underlines the danger that the Pakistani state faces from militancy linked to the ‘war on terror’, but with historic roots in the earlier Afghan war of liberation from Soviet occupation, or ‘jihad’ against ‘God-less communists’.

Fabrizio tells a young woman, Eriko, that it is very cold outside, while logs crackle in the fireplace and the sun sets behind the mountains, adorned with last night’s snowfall. It is all true, but they are acting, rehearsing a famous scene from the opera La Bohème, by Giacomo Puccini.