International

The United Nations (UN) and its agencies will use the 2010 World Cup to highlight Africa's slow progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving poverty by 2015.

UN under-secretary-general for communications and public information, Kiyo Akasaka, says that the UN is concerned that sub-Saharan countries are significantly behind schedule in realising some of the key development goals agreed to by more than 189 countries in Johannesburg in 2000.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has pledged US$25 million towards strengthening credible national institutions like parliaments, human rights organisations and anti-corruption commissions in developing countries, during 2010.

Some US$13 million of this amount will be spent on supporting election processes in Sub-Saharan countries during 2010-2011.

The funds will also go toward promoting inclusive governance programmes such as access to information and channels that allow stakeholder voices to be heard in governance processes.

Microsoft and Yahoo have received clearance from regulators in Washington and Europe to proceed with a search partnership intended to challenge Google.

The two companies announced that the partnership had been approved without restrictions by the US Justice Department and the European Commission.

Under the 10-year agreement, Microsoft's Bing search engine will process search requests and steer search-related advertisements on Yahoo.

The World Bank president has voiced his satisfaction at the actions taken by African governments to deal with the global economic crisis.

Ending an eight-day, three-nation trip to Africa, which took him to Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire and Ethiopia, Robert Bruce Zoellick says that, "I leave African impressed by the actions many governments have taken to cope with the global economic crisis.

South African users of Google email service Gmail can expect to be part of the international roll-out of ‘Buzz’, the Internet giant's social networking application.

Google's Hugo Barra, director of product management for mobile, says that, "We'll be rolling out ‘Buzz’ in about a week and we're doing it carefully so we don't take down Gmail."

The European Union (EU) announced a US$13 million fund to help thousands of Zimbabwean smallholder farmers, in a bid to revive the Southern African country's agriculture sector after years of decline.

The EU's food security coordinator in Zimbabwe, Pierre-Luc Vanhaeverbeke, says that 80 000 households would benefit from the US$13 million donation through training and farming inputs such as seed and fertiliser.

Facebook marked its sixth birthday by simplifying its home page and holding an all-night ‘hackathon’ to create new software for the social networking website.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, says that the online community is reaching another milestone with membership climbing to 400 million.

"So to celebrate six years of Facebook and the 400 million people on the service, we're doing what we like doing most – building and launching products for people," says Zuckerberg.

Software entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist, Bill Gates, has issued an upbeat assessment on the prospects of overcoming the challenges faced by the world's poorest people, many in Africa, in the fields of health and agriculture.

Gates argues that, "With vaccines, drugs, and other improvements, health in poor countries will continue to get better, and people will choose to have smaller families."