MOST of Ireland’s population will have vowed to diet in January. Luckily, the new season of Operation Transformation has begun, but how long after it has ended does the contestants’ new-found fitness last? We spoke to four former OT leaders.

Victoria Mary Clarke and Shane McGowan pictured at Tosca restaurant’s ‘pop-up’ event at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, in aid of Self Help Africa.

Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore suspended all financial assistance channelled through the office of the Ugandan prime minister Yoweri Museveni after €4m of Irish Aid funding went missing in a suspected fraud.

Some €4m of Irish Aid funding to Uganda has gone missing in a suspected fraud, the Government has disclosed.

The crisis that is looming in the Sahel region of Africa threatens millions with hunger, and comes as world leaders convened this week for their Rio + 20 UN Summit to review how sustainable development can achieve poverty eradication in the world.

BRIAN Cody and Mel C of the Spice Girls — an unlikely combination?

MEDIA reports (March 8) which claimed large sums of money raised in the early 1980s by Bob Geldof’s Band Aid were siphoned off to buy weapons in Ethiopia have met with a furious response from the anti-poverty campaigner.

THE Minister for Foreign Affairs has asked the winner of this year’s Young Scientist of the Year competition to meet with Irish Aid officials to discuss how his project can be used to save lives.

MOVES by the G8 agriculture ministers to put farming and food security at the heart of the international agenda during their first summit in Treviso, Italy, are to be welcomed.

THOUGH we face huge issues as we try to sustain our banking sector and restore some semblance of trust in it; though Finance Minister Brian Lenihan’s budget in just two weeks is likely to be more severe than any in living memory, most of us are still better off than our parents were.

THE newly appointed Irish ambassador to Ethiopia has warned that the coming weeks will be critical in determining how the drought-hit country copes with its food shortage.

TO SCHOOL through the fields took on a new meaning when Irish donors opened a secondary school in rural Ethiopia yesterday.

POVERTY and plenty are uneasy partners in Ethiopia’s drought-hit lands.

THE Irish public need to keep supporting aid and relief efforts in Ethiopia despite the confusing messages emerging about the extent of the famine alert there, the head of one the top development agencies has warned.

A CALL to recapture the spirit of the ’80s was made yesterday as aid chiefs warned Africa needed help from wealthier nations as much as ever.

Overseas Development Minister Peter Power will launch a new Irish development agency today focusing on eradicating poverty in Africa.