Development : NGOs pressure AsDB to strengthen safeguards (PRIV)
(IPS, Madrid)
Behind-the-scenes lobbying by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) paid off by the end of the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) concluding here Tuesday. Leading financial officials from a host of European countries came out in favour of the strong "safeguard policies" that activists are championing.

Development : AsDB soliciting private investments (PRIV)
(IPS, Madrid)
When he was not attending seminars at a conference centre in the Spanish capital, the Asian Development Bank's (AsDB) Seethapathy Chander was trying to broker deals to attract European investors to developing regions of Asia.

Latin America : 60 years on, ECLAC still has key role to play (PRIV)
(IPS, Santiago)
Among the tasks facing the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, is to contribute to the design of a development strategy to make the best use of the region's current bonanza.

United States : Pentagon targeted Iran for regime change after 9/11 (PRIV)
(IPS, Washington)
Three weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions.

United States : Blacks suffer persistent injustice in drug war (PRIV)
(IPS, Washington)
African Americans have suffered much higher rates of arrests and imprisonment than whites in the nearly 30-year-old US "war on drugs", according to two reports released here this week.

Europe : Warnings against bio-fuels get louder (PRIV)
(IPS, Brussels)
European efforts to promote bio-fuels should be rethought because of the contribution they have made to rising food prices, according to Jeffrey Sachs, a top economic advisor to the United Nations.

Mexico : No place for small farmers at the supermarkets (PRIV)
(IPS, Mexico City)
A Mexican coffee grower receives about three dollars per kilogram of unprocessed coffee beans, and the consumer here pays $11. That price difference, in large part, is the result of the growing power of a handful of supermarkets.