News stories by Julio Godoy, page 14

When U.S. President Barack Obama visits Germany this Thursday and Friday, he is likely to get a reception as warm as the demonstration of sympathy he enjoyed in July last year. And yet, Obama's high standing among Germans is likely to fall if he asks the German government to send more military personnel to Afghanistan.

The exposure of the European Commission's (EC) manufacturing of African business support for the contentious economic partnership agreements (EPAs) has so far elicited little action by members of the European Parliament.

European unions are facing a difficult choice this May Day between holding protests to protect workers' interests, or holding off to avoid a further deepening of the economic recession.

Sub-Saharan African countries have of late become the target of a new form of investment that is strongly reminiscent of colonialism: investors from both industrialised and emerging economies buy or lease large tracts of farm land across the continent, either to guarantee their own food provisions or simply as yet another business.

'Oh, dear Lord, what I am going through,' 'N', a 25-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad wrote several months ago. 'Am I going to see my family again? Sometimes, I even see my own dead body, lying somewhere. And I imagine the pain my death would cause to the people I love the most.'

The clean development mechanism, the Kyoto Protocol instrument that allows industries in rich countries to earn emission reduction credits by financing environment-friendly projects in developing countries, is a perverse but at the moment necessary tool to fight global warming, says a German environmental expert.

'Post-neo-liberalism' - that mouthful of a word was making the rounds at an international congress on the economic turmoil in Berlin last weekend. Just another buzzword, as some participants thought, or something necessary to describe the world past the now exposed economics of neo-liberalism?

The economic depression unfolding around the world has not touched trade in products from developing countries that certify respect for social and labour fairness, human rights and environmental standards, according to groups engaged in fair trade.

Africa's arduous path to development could be eased if governments took elementary measures to improve infrastructure, coordinate regional trade policies, capacitate customs personnel to speed up the regional exchange of goods and services and facilitate access of small and medium enterprises to financial resources.

Quickly after the idyllic scenes presented in the film, the story changes. The group of vigorous young men are home, greeted at the airport with flowers, hugs, kisses by loved ones and girlfriends. And then you find that the main character of the film 'Willkommen zu hause' ('Welcome Home') is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).