A Project that originated at a boutique ad agency to help Unicef deliver clean drinking water to children in developing countries is expanding in its third year as more firms join to support the cause.

nsg India gets into nuclear family On September 6, the 45-member nuclear suppliers group (nsg) lifted its 16-year-old embargo on nuclear commerce with India. The tough negotiations in Vienna went down to the wire after China, which had sounded positive in the run-up to the nsg meeting took a different line. Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Ireland also acted

Port-au-Prince

The death toll in Haiti from tropical storm Hanna rose to 136, officials said, as the country

Hurricane Gustav barreled toward vulnerable Haiti on Tuesday and could become the first major storm to threaten US oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico since the devastating 2005 hurricane season.

The seventh storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season had top sustained winds of 90 mph (145 kph) by 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), making it a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of storm intensity, the US National Hurricane Center said.

Rory Carroll

The number of people seeking help from aid agency feeding centres has tripled.

At first sight the business resembles a thriving pottery. In a dusty courtyard women mould clay and water into hundreds of little platters and lay them out to harden under the Caribbean sun.

The craftsmanship is rough and the finished products are uneven. But customers do not object. This is Cite Soleil, Haiti's most notorious slum, and these platters are not to hold food. They are food.

The current food crisis has been largely policy-driven, which is probably good news because it means that policies can also reverse the process.

in the first week of April, thousands of people stormed the presidential palace in Haiti, throwing stones and demanding the resignation of President Rene Preval over soaring food prices. In

Rising food prices may derail biofuels policy

Record global food prices will be on the agenda of the Group of Eight heads of state summit in July for the first time in almost 30 years, amid mounting concerns about the social, political and economic impact of the food crisis. The International Monetary Fund on Monday gave its starkest warning about the impact of rising commodities, saying food and oil prices "risk becoming a destabilising force in the global economy'. Yasuo Fukuda, Japan's prime minister, said in a letter to his G8 colleagues that soaring food prices were posing "imminent and serious' global challenges.