News stories by Matthew O. Berger, page 3

With conservatives likely to be the biggest winners in Tuesday's U.S. congressional elections, efforts to achieve a more compassionate national immigration policy may be one of the biggest losers.

In the run-up to the U.S. elections set to take place Nov. 2, the amount of money being spent and eccentricities on display have reached record levels. This has been particularly obvious in debates over energy and climate change.

Though close to a billion people remain undernourished worldwide, one in three U.S. children are overweight — a problem that First Lady Michelle Obama has made her priority over the first two years of her husband's administration.

As part of a more general promise of reform to U.S. development policy, the U.S. Agency for International Development is poised to fundamentally alter the way it tackles poverty overseas.

Amidst fears of a recurring food crisis, the World Bank has reactivated its Global Food Crisis Response Programme (GFRP), dedicating up to 760 million dollars to countries at risk of food price volatility.

With a record number of people undernourished last year — and that number only down about 10 percent this year — this year's World Food Day, to take place Saturday, carries with it a new sense of urgency. But in the conferences and events being held to commemorate the day, there will also likely be a sense of hope and opportunity.

Just over three years after having voted against it at the United Nations, the United States is in the process of reviewing its position on the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

With just under three months before southern Sudan votes on whether to become an independent country, the U.S. is stepping up efforts to ensure the vote and post-vote resolution are peaceful and credible — and NGOs are stepping up pressure to ensure that Washington follows through.

With new figures showing a record amount of World Bank funding for projects relying on coal power and other fossil fuels, the issue of reforming the institution's energy lending was once again a hot topic at the World Bank and IMF annual meetings, which concluded over the weekend.

When the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund got under way this week, the agenda ranged from ongoing talks about 'currency wars' between countries to how to maintain progress on poverty reduction in the face of economic crises, to reforming the mandates and governance of the Washington-based international financial institutions.