The aid debate in the UK at the moment needs one of those furniture labels: "highly flammable - keep away from naked flame". If you go near it with anything at all combustible, you're likely to get burnt.

There's a big question over whether David Cameron's reported comments...

Three years ago David Cameron, then Leader of the Opposition, found some stirring words on Europe. "Today", he said, "European countries need to work together to combat global climate change, to fight global poverty, to boost global economic growth...we will look forward to working with our European partners to make...

Picture the scene: Trafalgar Square is packed, people spilling out onto Whitehall and round under Admiralty Arch and onto the Mall, straining to see. Big screens are dotted around for those further back. Children are lifted onto shoulders; flag in hand, heart in mouth.

The announcement is made and...

I'm not saying everything I know in life I learned from Hong Kong Phooey. But somehow, it was the opening seconds of that legendary TV cartoon that sprung to mind recently when news broke from Washington of a big step forward in the fight for transparency in the oil, mining...

This week we celebrated Nelson Mandela's 94th birthday and it is a time for us to reflect on the achievements of the great man. I was lucky enough to share a stage with him in Trafalgar Square in 2005 for Make Poverty History. Today we still share a belief that...

Today we are squaring up to big oil. Adverts will appear in papers across Europe shining a spotlight on a few corporate lobbyists who are trying to water down a new law that could transform millions of lives. It's an unusual move for us - we're more used...

A lot can happen in a few years. In 2005 world leaders stood proud as they promised to double aid to the poorest countries in Africa. But fast forward to today and despite promises "not to balance the books on the backs of the poor", there are worrying signs resolve...

For many of us, the British Chancellor's annual budget announcement is a familiar ritual. We watch out for the extra couple of pence on a pint of beer or a glass of wine. We wince at the inevitable hike at the petrol pumps and wait hopefully for a few pounds...

An uneasy sensation, of the pit-of-the-stomach kind, spread among the activists and donors supporting the fight against AIDS this week.

The Global Fund, the international partnership that channels money to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, announced it has been forced to delay applications for new programmes due...

As somebody once said about these big summits: if you're not at the table, you're probably on the menu. And Greece has been breakfast, lunch and dinner here at the G20 so far. Its bones have been well and truly picked over. There can hardly be a morsel left to...

ONE's new campaign ad is getting a lot of attention. Not all of it of the admiring kind. Yahoo's news pages brand it the "shocking F-word vid". In the UK, the folk who decide what is fit and proper content for TV ads are stewing over it. A...

From the tsunami in 2004 to the Japanese earthquake earlier this year, the world has a long-established system in which citizens of the world, and their governments, support each other in times of humanitarian emergency. But it seems not all disasters are equal. More than 12 million people...