News stories by Sanjay Suri, page 4

As numbers go, and as expectations went, 20 billion dollars would be a fair bit for the G8 to produce to fight the food crisis and bring down hunger. Certainly, it was more than most expected.

Clear signs are emerging at the G8 summit here of progress towards concluding new terms for international trade.

'The world needs a new global governance,' the G5 declared Wednesday, 'the construction of which must be based on inclusive multilateralism.' As rhetoric goes, this might sound like more of the same. But the time and place of that declaration gave the words a new significance.

The G8 leaders meeting early July must address a crisis resulting from a sharp decline in investment in agriculture, Oxfam demands in a new study.

Human rights campaigners are looking to the House of Lords to thwart, or at least dilute, a proposed new law to enable secret inquest.

This time, more than in years before, Christmas is so much more about Santa Claus than about Jesus Christ. Santa has after all, the power to move markets in ways that poor Jesus never contemplated.

The older the democracy, the less there seems to be now of freedom of expression and right to information, according to a new study by the London-based group Article 19.