


After months of kite-flying, the world’s wealthiest countries announced a debt-relief plan on June 19 which, they said, was designed to reduce the debt-burden of the world’s 33 poorest countries by up to $70bn from its present level of $127bn.
As the world inches closer toward the new millennium, humanity continues to be polarized into rich and poor. The rich mostly live in the industrialized countries of the northern hemisphere, while the poor mainly inhabit the developing countries of the South.
Conventional wisdom views childhood as a set stage of life through which all human beings pass on their way to adulthood. In the west, psychology since the 19th century has attempted to discern and delimit the various stages of child development.
At US$7 trillion, America has the largest economy in the world (the world’s economy is put at $25 trillion). Currently the US also enjoys a robust job growth rate with unemployment put officially at a mere 5 percent, lowest of all the industrialised countries.