Food production in developing countries will halve in the next 20 years unless wealthy nations lower their rate of consumption, the Stockholm Environment Institute warned at a weekend conference.
No Oil Yet, but Tiny African Isle Finds Slippery Dealings
7/02/07 Barry Meier & Jad Mouawad. NY Times
A decade ago, geologists found signs that one of Africa's least-known countries, the tiny island nation of São Tomé and Principe, might hold a king's ransom in oil.
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 4, 2007; Page A01
AMMAN, Jordan -- Inside his cold, crumbling apartment, Saad Ali teeters on the fringes of life. Once a popular singer in his native Baghdad, he is now unemployed. To pay his $45 monthly rent, he borrows from friends. To bathe, he boils water on a tiny heater. He sleeps on a frayed mattress, under a tattered blanket.
San Francisco
TODAY more than three-quarters of the world's oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn't always this way.
Until about 35 years ago, the world's oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world's largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.
Omar, a Sunni driver, lived in a pleasant house in a Shia neighbourhood of al-Jihad district in west Baghdad until he decided that it was too dangerous for his family to stay.
He moved with them to Damascus, but it was too expensive and he had no chance of getting a job.
He returned to his home in al-Jihad, but when he arrived his neighbours said that the Mahdi Army Shia militia had left a message for him. It said that if he ever re-occupied the house, they would kill him.
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DAMASCUS, 25 March 2007 (IRIN) - Life for Ahlam al-Mulla, her husband and three children was meant to get easier after they fled their home outside Baghdad for the safety of Syria.
In July 2004, the 42-year-old Sunni was kidnapped on her way to work for the Iraqi Help Centre - a US-sponsored welfare organisation. The militia men who took her accused her of being an agent of the US occupation. They beat her for eight days, she said.
"My husband had to pay US $50,000 to get me released, otherwise I would have been killed," Ahlam told IRIN in her bare living room in Damascus. "I was absolutely terrified."