News stories by Eli Clifton, page 3

The U.S. Congress is moving forward with a bill to sanction companies that do business in Iran despite the White House's efforts to build international support for U.N. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The global economic crisis is projected to hamper progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and will directly impact MDGs related to hunger, child and maternal health, gender equality, access to clean water and disease control, according to a report released Friday by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Representatives of the governments of the United States, Canada, Spain and South Korea, along with Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, joined together Thursday to launch a 900-million-dollar global trust fund to fight global food insecurity.

Political momentum for a levy against the world's largest banks to repay governments for the cost of bank rescue packages during the global financial crisis has gained momentum with the leak of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report which calls for a set of taxes against the financial industry.

Global perceptions of the U.S. have improved over the past year but ratings of many other countries, including Britain, Japan, Canada and the European Union, have declined over the same period, according to a poll released Sunday.

On the second and last day of the largest gathering of world leaders ever in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama connected the commitments made here on securing vulnerable nuclear materials to the broader goal of a 'nuclear-free world'.

One of the largest gatherings of world leaders ever on U.S. soil began Monday with representatives of 47 countries gathering here for the Nuclear Security Summit.

On Apr. 12 and 13, U.S. President Barack Obama will host over 40 world leaders in Washington to develop a strategy to secure nuclear materials and prevent nuclear terrorism, following up on his announcements this week that that the U.S. would significantly modify its nuclear strategy and reduce the number of nuclear warheads in its stockpile by one-third.

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday unveiled a new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that will significantly limit the circumstances under which Washington would use nuclear weapons as part of a strategy to bolster the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and other efforts to halt and reverse the spread of nuclear arms.

Springtime appears to be bringing a thaw in U.S.-China relations, with U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao holding an hour-long phone conversation Thursday in which both leaders expressed a desire to build a more positive bilateral relationship