There is an alternative to throwing cash at the problem: affordable childcare

Sleep easy, America: a clear and present threat to national security has once more been averted by your intelligence services.

In India more people live in poverty than in the whole of Africa. It is a region where the most vulnerable women, babies and children are hit the hardest. 

On another beach in a different world, Chinasa Paul would be sipping a soft drink bought by his parents. But if the 15-year-old eats today in Lagos, it will be thanks to tips he receives for lugging crates of drinks up and down Kuramo Beach.

An extra $360m (£220m) is urgently needed to tackle the food crisis in Somalia and across east Africa, the World Food Programme said yesterday, as aid agencies dubbed the routes to Kenya's refugee camps "roads of death" thanks to the numbers dying on the way.

Charities and ministers issued urgent appeals for donations yesterday to the Somalia famine appeal.

The United Nations has resumed aid deliveries into Islamist-controlled Somalia in an effort to stem the daily tide of 3,500 famine refugees pouring into neighbouring countries.

Lax regulation and an endless demand by childless couples in the West has created an often exploitative market in babies born in the developing world

The hat worn by Princess Beatrice to the royal wedding has raised £81,100 for charity in an online auction.

Climate change is increasing the number of disasters which hit children in poor countries, campaigners have warned.

The Cambodian government has started inspecting more than 250 orphanages after it was revealed that most of the country's 12,000 orphans have at least one living parent. The government said that until the assessment is completed, it had no idea whether the children were being cared for properly.

Barcelona today announced the most lucrative shirt sponsorship deal in football history - worth 150 million euros (£125million) with the Qatar Foundation.

The Honourable Member of Parliament for Birkenhead has never sat very comfortably in his own party. Tony Blair appointed him welfare reform minister and asked him to think the unthinkable, then sacked him a year later for doing precisely that. More than a decade on, Frank Field received a similar brief, this time outside the Government, from a Conservative Prime Minister. The fruits of his labours were published yesterday in a report entitled The Foundation Years: Preventing Poor Children Becoming Poor Adults; his conclusions made characteristically awkward reading.

The UK's education system has "lost its way", a leading headmistress said today.