The total number of food insecure people was probably closer to about three billion, or about half the population of the world, according to the United Nations midyear update of the World Economic Situation and Prospects. In addition, approximately 18,000 children die daily as a direct or indirect consequence of inadequate nutrition, the UN report says.

China has shown up Myanmar's generals. But it is not too late for outsiders to help the Burmese Eyevine

The global scenario on preserving biological diversity remains dismal. The latest findings of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) show that nations, including India, all signatories to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), are unlikely to achieve the target set for them by 2010 to protect their biodiversity.

The soaring food prices that have triggered global political and economic turmoil over the past year have finally shown the first tentative signs of stabilising. The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation food price index, considered the best measure of global food inflation, saw its first decline in 15 months in April, as wheat, dairy, sugar and soyabean prices fell.

Realism comes with a hefty price tag. Iraq was supposed to have put paid to the internationalist impulse in foreign policy. The gathering outrage at the behaviour of the military junta in Burma reminds us that foreign policy, like life, is never quite so simple

Yangon: The United Nations said on Tuesday that only a tiny portion of international aid needed for Myanmar's cyclone victims is making it into the country, amid reports that the military regime is hoarding good-quality foreign aid for itself and doling out rotten food. The country's isolated military regime has agreed to accept relief shipments from the UN and foreign countries, but has largely refused entry to aidworkers who might distribute the aid.

The U.N. on Tuesday said only a tiny portion of international relief is reaching Myanmar's cyclone victims, amid fears that the military regime is hoarding high-quality foreign aid for itself while people make do with rotten food.

YANGON, Myanmar: Aid continued to arrive in Myanmar on Tuesday - a darkly clouded and rainy day here and in the south - but international aid experts and diplomats in the capital expressed concern that the government was not up to the task of delivering the aid effectively.

Burma's ruling junta was last night locked in an increasingly tense stand-off with the international community after flatly refusing to allow foreign aid workers into the country to tackle the impact of the recent cyclone disaster. Amid clear indications that between 60,000 and 100,000 people are now dead or missing in the region, the Burmese junta said it was prepared to receive offers of aid from foreign sources, including the US.

Agrarian crises leading to suicides by farmers, large-scale evictions in rural and urban areas, state-sponsored violence and social discrimination are some of the issues highlighted in the "shadow reports' submitted to the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) committee that will review India's record 17 years after its ratification by the country.