Two years on, what’s happened to all that money? Which countries have matched their pledges with hard cash? Who’s holding back? How much has been spent on emergency relief programmes, and how much on longer-term reconstruction projects? And, crucially, what is there to show for all this? Figures released by the UN special envoy for [...]

Two years after the ground shook in Haiti, more than 500,000 people remain on the street, many of them wondering why all that assistance did not lift them out of dire straits. In a nation where the minimum wage is $5 a day, international aid groups say seven-figure donations aimed at rebuilding the healthcare, housing [...]

A top Chinese diplomat on Monday rejected linking Iran’s nuclear program to trade, adding to tensions with Washington on the eve of a visit by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to seek support for sanctions on Tehran’s oil industry. A deputy foreign minister, Cui Tiankai, said China’s trade with Iran, an important oil supplier, has [...]

On Jan. 10 at 1 p.m. on the west lawn of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, concerned citizens from all over the state will gather to ask Gov. John Kasich to impose an indefinite moratorium on Ohio’s oil and gas wastewater injection well sites and the natural gas extraction process that has become well [...]

While the US military has formally ended its occupation of Iraq, some of the largest western oil companies, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, remain. … “Prior to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, US and other western oil companies were all but completely shut out of Iraq’s oil market,” oil industry analyst Antonia Juhasz told [...]

Many of the key points in President Obama’s new blueprint for the next decade of U.S. defense strategy are straightforward. More spy gear; more special forces; fewer land wars; Asia, Asia, Asia. Whatever you think of the merits of those points, at least they’re internally consistent. Others… not so much. Sometimes the analysis in the [...]

… Given that most smallholder farmers do not reach their maximum yield potential – in Africa, for instance, yields are only 20% of their potential and could be increased as much as threefold if farmers had access to existing technologies – could the widescale success of [mini-packs of] shampoos be translated to agricultural development? Solving [...]

In the world of French farming, unrestricted and royalty-free use of seeds may soon be no more than a happy memory. For several decades seeds have been brought under the protection of plant variety certificates, which enshrine plant breeders’ rights. Resowing such seed was theoretically prohibited, but in practice it was largely tolerated in France. [...]

… Military overreach and serial economic crises have bequeathed us a generation of small leaders who battle with events that outsize them. They have stopped trying to fashion them, but appeal instead to a defensive desire. For more on this story, visit: United States as a global power: new world disorder | Editorial | Comment [...]

Detroit’s gargantuan motor show starts on 9 January. When the doors open at 6am on Monday, more than 5,000 journalists from 50-plus countries will descend on the city’s Cobo convention centre for a first look at the hottest new vehicles. Once again the world’s top car firms are showcasing electric cars and hybrid vehicles. BMW, [...]