Much of the aid to Africa was used to finance grandiose projects and to underwrite misguided, repressive policies. The rest was embezzled by elite gangsters. Mauritania, a poor arid West African country, receives aid from wealthy western countries. About 70 percent of it goes back as interest payments and the rest is embezzled. “The chief opposition party, Union des Forces Democratiques, claims that since 1985, the government of President Maaouya Ould Sid’ Ahmed Taya has siphoned away $1.8 billion of aid money for itself and its supporters.

For some months the world has seen a steady escalation of US military involvement in Yemen, a dismally poor land adjacent to Saudi Arabia on its north, the Red Sea on its west, the Gulf of Aden on its south, opening to the Arabian Sea, overlooking another desolate land that has been in the headlines of late, Somalia.

It is high time that civilian and military personnel in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the US Army fix what in the minds of many has become a get-rich scheme for retired military contractors and their friends.

The Yemeni government is cooperating with the U.S. in identifying possible targets for a “retaliation” that is aimed at appeasing the hawks. A retaliatory attack thousands of miles away cannot mend the harm or dilute the impact and feeling of insecurity created by an attack on home soil. A huge security loophole lurks in the international civil aviation system.

AN American Airlines jet carrying 152 people crashed and broke in two shortly after landing at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica, Tuesday night, injuring at least 40 passengers.

THE Global Climate Change Summit recently held in Copenhagen, Denmark, is symbolic of the deep-seated divisions that characterise global efforts to push back the effects of global warming.

Succession planning within Zanu PF has certainly been dealt a major blow by the recent trouncing of the Mnangagwa camp for key posts within the party. However, Mujuru generally lacks the political clout to compete against Mnangagwa.

Missouri six places down
By Tawanda Kanhema
Missouri has fallen from position 31 in 2007 to a distant 36 in 2009 on the U.S. national health delivery rankings, according to the Commonwealth Fund State Scorecard on Health Performance.
Hawaii, which ranked number one in 2007 for the best access, prevention and treatment, avoidable hospital use and costs, equity [...]

After the guns, books and dollars
Government embarks on reforms, integrates women

Multi-billion dollar deals, integration of women into important government positions and safeguarding the new government against plots by reactionary forces from the Charles Taylor days are the major preoccupations of the new government in Liberia. The Liberian Ambassador to Zimbabwe and Special Advisor to [...]

Cuba is one of the countries that actively contributed to Namibia’s independence from apartheid South Africa. Apart from providing the much needed ideological and logistical support to Namibia during the west African country’s arduous struggle for independence, Cuba sent an estimated 371,000 troops to fight alongside South West African People’s Organisation combatants in Angola over a period of 15 years and provided refuge to Namibians displaced by the war. When the crimson curtain closed on that brutal conflict, Namibia managed to free itself from the shackles of coloninal dominance. Cuba is many things to many people and is seen differently in different parts of the world. Here is one such perspective from Bill Simpich, an antiwar activist in the San Francisco Bay Area.