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.

IF PROOF were needed that the global economic slowdown is hitting the poorest and most vulnerable hardest, it has been borne out by latest figures from the UN which show that more than one billion people face hunger and starvation this year.

THE recent study by the medical journal The Lancet into the threat posed by climate change has introduced an important new voice into the discourse on the effects that global warming will have in the decades ahead.

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.

THE United Nation's Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned this week that as many as one billion people across the globe will go hungry this year as a result of the recession, and increasing global food prices.

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.

THE combination of severe drought and rising food prices that has left hundreds of thousands in Ethiopia threatened with starvation must provoke a real sense of déjà vu for people in the west.

We cannot afford to wait for an onslaught of harrowing images of dying people to realise a humanitarian crisis is looming in Niger. Liam Horan reports from Niger.

Aid agencies have said they hope to gain access to parts of Iraq under US control within the coming weeks.

TRÓCAIRE’s head of communications, Caroline Lynch, is today making a trip not many would envy.

IRISH aid agencies are stepping up their presence on the borders of Iraq, anticipating a major humanitarian crisis there when war is launched and bombing begins.

Irish aid agency GOAL is preparing for the imminent US/British attack on Iraq.