Paul Julius Reuter noticed that, with the electric telegraph, news no longer required days or weeks to travel long distances. In the 1850s, the 34-year-old Reuter was based in Aachen \u2014 then in the Kingdom of Prussia, now in Germany \u2014 close to the borders with the Netherlands and Belgium. He began using the newly opened Berlin\u2013Aachen telegraph line to send news to Berlin. However, there was a 76-mile (122 km) gap in the line between Aachen and Brussels, Belgium\u2019s capital city and financial center. Reuter saw an opportunity to speed up news service between Brussels and Berlin by using homing pigeons to bridge that gap.<\/p>\n
G8 avoids bold aid promises amid budget strains<\/p>\n
TORONTO\/HUNTSVILLE, Ontario (Reuters) \u2013 G8 wealthy countries said on Saturday that the global economic crisis threatened to undermine 2015 global targets for reducing extreme poverty worldwide, but avoided bold new aid promises.<\/p>\n
At the end of a two-day summit in a lakeside resort north of Toronto, the Group of Eight failed to acknowledge its unmet aid promises. The group fell $18 billion short of a $50 billion pledge to double aid to poor countries by 2010.Instead, the G8 trumpeted a $5 billion initiative to reduce deaths among mothers and babies, which has become a growing concern in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.The meeting took place amid doubts about the strength of the economic recovery and the state of public finances, which has left leaders unable to offer bolder aid commitments.\u201dA decade of policy commitments and joint efforts with our partners has brought significant progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),\u201d the communique read.\u201dBut both developed and developing countries must do more; meanwhile, the (economic) crisis has jeopardized advancement toward meeting some of the 2015 targets.\u201dIt said meeting the 2015 poverty goals \u2014 agreed by leaders of more than 150 nations in 2000 \u2014 was a \u201cshared responsibility\u201d and urged greater efforts to ensure the targets were met in Africa.The first day of the G8 summit included African leaders from Senegal, Malawi, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, also Haiti and Jamaica. They left without making statements.The G8 called on developing countries to also help themselves by adopting policies that boost social and economic development and tackle corruption.REMEMBER AID PROMISESIn an interview,BP says no asset sales in S.Africa, Mozambique_3658, World Bank Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said calls for Africa to also help itself were \u201cfair enough\u201d given budgetary pressures in rich countries. But the donors should not forget their aid promises.\u201dIt is true that developing countries need to help themselves \u2014 and they are prepared to help themselves \u2014 but at the same time developed countries also need to remember the commitments they made,\u201d she told Reuters Insider Television.Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian finance minister who aggressively led a campaign against corruption,Coach Button Purses<\/a>, said less resources in poor countries meant more mothers and their infants could die.\u201dEveryone understand the difficulty these countries are in but remember we\u2019re talking about lives here,\u201d she said, \u201cEach time we\u2019re not able to come up with resources,Abercrombie and fitch mens jeans<\/a>, these are mothers that are dying and there is a big inequity between developed and developing countries,\u201d Okonjo-Iweala added.Development groups estimate that 350,000 mothers and 8.8 million children under the age of five die each year from preventable diseases and limited or no healthcare.BOOSTING FOOD PRODUCTIONThe G8 said food security was an urgent global development challenge, which was being exacerbated by climate changes.The U.S. has led efforts to boost agricultural production in poor countries and spearheaded a G8 initiative last year to reverse underinvestment in the sector.The G8 said aid alone would not end hunger and urged donors and private groups to investment more in agriculture.It pressed the World Bank and global food agencies to develop guidelines for foreigners wanting to invest in farmland overseas, following accusations that wealthier nations have been staging a land grab to feed their own people.The G8 nations said tackling climate change \u201cremains top of the mind\u201d and renewed support for U.N.-led climate talks.\u201dWe want a comprehensive, ambitious, fair,BP CEO the ghost at the feast as Russia fetes big oil_8120, effective, binding, post-2012 agreement involving all countries, and including the respective responsibilities of all major economies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,\u201d the G8 said.Talks to agree on a new climate treaty have been stymied by broad differences over emission targets and who should pay for poorer nations as they struggle with climate changes.(Additional reporting by Jan Strupczewski, John Irish and David Ljunggren; Editing by Janet Guttsman)<\/p>\n Reuters employs several thousand journalists, sometimes at the cost of their lives. In May 2000, Kurt Schork,Abercrombie And Fitch Mens For UK, an American reporter, was killed in an ambush while on assignment in Sierra Leone. In April and August 2003, news cameramen Taras Protsyuk and Mazen Dana were killed in separate incidents by US troops in Iraq. In July 2007, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were killed when they were fired upon by a US military<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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