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Ben Murphy writes from the Global Platform, the disaster risk reduction summit and argues that urgent action is needed to transform the losing battle against risk.

In recent months food scandals have hit the headlines across the globe with horsemeat being passed off as beef in Europe and rat dressed up as lamb in China. And these are probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Shocking new statistics released by Oxfam this week have shown that governments are letting people hide at least $18.5 trillion in offshore tax havens. Yes, you read that right: not $18.5 million, or even $18.5 billion, but $18.5 trillion!

If you think this is an outrage, share these graphics (below) with your friends online; or send them to your goverment's leader so they hear your voice.

While gender equality is enshrined in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and in legislation in most countries, women’s conditions of participation in markets and their rewards from that participation, still remain woefully unequal to men’s.

Many women work in temporary or informal positions and are therefore “invisible” to laws and regulations.

In the world of development, money answers many questions. If we’re interested in finding out how far we have come in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or in what direction we should go for a post-2015 agenda, having the right numbers in place is paramount to moving forward. This is what makes Government Spending Watch (GSW) so exciting.

This mother’s day, instead of valorizing moms with well-intended, but often artificial appreciation for the vast amounts of unpaid labor that women do every day, I would rather we all take a hard look at what it would take for women to not have to shoulder so many responsibilities in the first place.

Several African countries are amongst today’s fastest growing economies in the world, boosted in many instances by new discoveries of oil, natural gas and strategic mineral reserves. Extreme poverty on the continent is in decline, and progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals has accelerated. A number of very poor African countries, including Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia have made recent and substantial improvements in their levels of income equality.

Last week the UN revealed for the first time that more than a quarter of a million people died in Somalia over 18 months from October 2010-April 2012. These figures are shockingly high especially when you think about the fact that most of the deaths were probably preventable if the world had just reacted sooner to the warnings that were coming out of the region as the rains started to fail in 2010.

The tragic collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh has put a spotlight on the poor pay and working conditions endured by millions of people who make our clothes or grow our food.

For many people around the world the first of May is International Workers’ Day, a chance to celebrate the role of workers and labourers in our society. So we thought this would be a good time to look a little harder at how the 'Big 10' food and beverage companies score for their policies towards workers rights on our Behind the Brands companies scorecard. It's a mixed picture.

There are promises and promises, but we get nothing, Fatima, a refugee from Syria, told one of my colleagues in Lebanon last week. Her counterparts in Jordan where I was visiting tell a very similar story. They call for more aid for those who have fled Syria of course – but also for something to be done for the millions left behind in their country’s vicious conflict.