UN World Food Programme (WFP) staff work through gunfire, shells, earthquakes and radiation alerts in the field. The 2012 Awards of Merit, described in WFP’s latest edition of the internal magazine ‘Pipeline’, tell the stories of these courageous workers.

 The team in Japan had to work in dangerous and unprecedented conditions when they sent aid to help the country recover from a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

ROME – A corrupt FAO employee in Sri Lanka used connections to Tamil Tigers fighters to intimidate bosses and avoid dismissal for bilking as much as dlrs 1.57 million from the agency by setting up fake companies, a senior development source on the troubled island says.

ROME – Dr Richard Hodges was warmly welcomed at a lecture he delivered on Butrint in his first American University of Rome appearance ahead of his inauguration as the university's President in July.

The Scientific Director of the Butrint Foundation who previously was director of the prestigious British School in Rome, Dr Hodges’ background in archaeology is not to be argued with, and his knowledge of the tiny man-made Albanian landscape of Butrint was impressive in his lecture this month entitled ‘Butrint: At the Crossroads of the Mediterranean’.

SARAJEVO-- The sickening crack from a Serbian sharpshooter's rifle made my American colleague jump bolt upright in the driver's seat. "Take it easy," his young woman Bosnian interpreter said with a gentle smile as the car hurtled down Sniper’s Alley toward the Holiday Inn hotel's underground garage. The high velocity bullet ricocheted with an eery, loud echo across the otherwise deserted highway.