Maritime transport is one of the vital arteries of the world economy: no less then 95 percent of all goods traded are transported by sea. When this goes wrong, often the consequences cannot be overlooked.

According to a new dossier from the UN there’s an urgent need for regulations and transparency about nano-technology. Nowadays, hundreds of products with uncontrolled nano-parts have been commercialized.

In the European Union 78 million people live below the poverty line – this is one in six Europeans. For children the risk is even higher (19%). And despite the economic growth of the last couple of years, over 8 % of the working people also live below the poverty line.

The government wants to spend 0.6 percent of the national income or 2.2 billion euro on development aid. That’s 600 million euro more than in 2008. Just as in the case of comparable sudden increases, a large debt removal (in this case for Iraq and Congo) is part of the explanation. But there will also be real extra money.

Where is one of the world’s largest solar energy parks? In Serpa. Where is electricity gained from the swell? In Aguçadoura. Both are in Portugal.

Without energy-input, the productivity of the rural poor cannot be improved, and the Millennium goals will not be achieved. This is what the Economic and Monetary Union of Western African Countries (Uemoa) says in a new report.

On 10 December the French researchers Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier got the Nobel prize for Medicine. Twenty-five years ago these scientists discovered the virus that causes aids. Where are we today?

In the subway of Mexico City there’s a campaign running called Viajemos Seguras – Let’s travel safely. The initiative for this campaign comes from the city authorities and needs to rid the capital’s subway system of physical and sexual violence towards women.

World famous military strategist Martin van Creveld is formal: from a strategic point of view Ukraine is invaluable for Russia. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former advisor of National Security in the US even claimed 'without Ukraine nu Russian Empire'. Why is Ukraine so important for the Cremlin? Kristof Clerix asked two leading thinktanks.

From the 1st till the 12th of december, ministers of environment and climate from 190 countries, researchers and ngo-delegates gathered in the Polish city Poznán. It was the last big convention in the action plan towards the conference of Copenhagen in december 2009, where a post-Kyotoprotocol will have to be created.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights celebrates its sixtieth anniversary. MO* commissioned an opinion poll with 500 Flemish citizens on the issue of human rights. The good news: the Flemish people are well disposed towards human rights. But wether human rights will receive the necessary support on an international level, is quite a different m ...

'A living legend.’ A good number of Cuban men and women could wear that title: musicians, politicians, athletes and writers. Marta Rojas is one of them.