Well-heeled consultants and companies in the west are the beneficiaries of a global aid system which results in less than 40p in every pound helping to eradicate poverty in the developing world, according to a report out last week. Just over a month before Britain will make a doubling of aid a centrepiece of the Gleneagles summit, the charity ActionAid said the bulk of the money currently allocated was wasted, misdirected or recycled within rich countries. It found that 61% of aid flows were "phantom" rather than "real" - rising to almost 90% in the case of France and the United States.

The combination of drought and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa could put up to seven million people at risk of starvation over the next few months and "threaten to undermine the precious progress" made in HIV/AIDS treatment in the region, U.N. officials said on Wednesday, Toronto's Globe and Mail reports. World Food Programme Executive Director and the U.N. Secretary General's Special Envoy for Southern Africa James Morris, UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot, UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman and 10 U.N. representatives of countries in the region met on Wednesday in Johannesburg, South Africa, to discuss current HIV/AIDS programs, U.N. reforms and the need to ramp up humanitarian responses to the pandemic.