Zimbabwe needs the west to engage Mugabe

20 August 2009

By Michael Holman

 

It is time for western governments to swallow their pride, re-engage in Zimbabwe and do business with Robert Mugabe. The country's battered people urgently need help: compassion and self-interest demands that the west provide it; the future of the oppotition Movement for Democratic Change could well depend on it. 

Legal flaws hinder piracy fight, warn lawyers

2 December 2008

By Michael Peel and Robert Wright in London

Flaws in anti-piracy laws and their enforcement are hampering the fight against ship hijacks that have claimed 40 vessels off the Somali coast this year, maritime lawyers and officials have warned. Governments and international bodies such as the UN are urgently reviewing how to combat piracy after last monthäs seizure of the Sirius Star oil tanker highlighted the sharp rise in hijacks in the Gulf of Aden, the gateway to the key Suez Canal. 

 

 

Africa: celebrity and salvation

22 October 2006

More than twenty years ago Bob Geldof and I shared what turned out to be a case of wishful thinking. We believed that the millions of pounds raised by Band Aid in a response to the famine that was wracking Ethiopia would go towards ensuring that never again would we look at our television screens and see emaciated figures, the consequence of famine, dying.