By Ken Hackett

Last month saw the passing of Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution that lifted millions of people out of hunger through the production of high-yield varieties of wheat.

In the ensuing four decades, we have made significant progress in the fight against global hunger. Thanks...

By Tim O'Connor, Caritas Australia

"I was just thinking I have to save my Adik (little brother)", says Eman a construction worker with an incredible story of courage and survival in the wake of the recent Sumatran earthquake.

It was 5.16pm local time on a humid 30th of September in...

By Ken Hackett

The spotlight that follows the president of the United States shines on Africa as Barack Obama heads for Ghana. When our president departs this West African country for the next stop on his journey, neither the American people nor our government should let the continent drift from...

By Ken Hackett

Is a clash of civilizations inevitable between the West and Islam?

President Barack Obama doesn't think so. In his recent speech in Cairo to the Muslim world, he sought out the common ground and values that unite all people of good will, noting that America and Islam...

In 2006, a 1-year-old boy was playing with neighborhood children in a yard near the family home in Baghdad. Suddenly a white car pulled up: Men came out and took the toddler. "They didn't take any of the other children," says his mother Qahira, an Iraqi woman in her 40s...

Across Tanzania, 1.1 million children have been affected by HIV, with many losing one or both parents to the virus. The majority of these "orphans and vulnerable children" -- even if taken in by compassionate relatives -- struggle to have enough food to eat and to afford school.

"All my troubles began when I fell in love."

The young woman's intense dark eyes seem almost unnaturally unblinking, their gaze too steady. Ana*, a dark-haired woman now in her mid-twenties, is describing the man she fell for when she was sixteen.

She met him in her Eastern European...

"Good energy there," my CRS coworker commented as we left a church celebration for Pope Benedict today. The young Palestinian seminarians, elderly nuns, and magenta-robed prelates in the church were clearly thrilled to be seeing the pope in person. Praying and singing hymns in several languages, the congregation waved gold-and-white...

Pope Benedict surprised many commentators when, just minutes after stepping off his plane in Tel Aviv, he called for a homeland for both Israelis and Palestinians. Many expected, and applauded, his strong denunciation of anti-Semitism. But few expected him to bring up the issue of Palestinian statehood so quickly.

Two...

I've been the last seven days in Baghdad, lodging in a Chaldean Catholic convent in a Shiite neighborhood across from the green zone. The two nuns here - protected round the clock by guards of their own choosing who are paid by the Iraqi government - leave their small compound...

By Debbie DeVoe

They call it "the cut."

Some girls are told their little fingers will be cut off but are assured they will grow back by the end of the three-week seclusion. Others are told they will grow a long tail between their legs if they don't get...

By Ken Hackett

Not that long ago, there was a simple explanation for why malaria would never be eradicated - only poor people get it. That meant that though this disease kills approximately 880,000 people each year and infects tens of millions rendering many unable to work, to go to...

By Paul Miller

There we were in a bobbing quandary, broken and almost out of steam, lacking any apparent forward movement, a rudderless metaphor for the people of the Congo. We were on the "Chinese" boat, one of a handful of crafts that shuttle passengers between the northern and southern...