by Bronwen Maddox, Times Online, UK - Today more than 60 countries gather in Paris to consider Afghanistan’s request for $50 billion (£25 billion) to try to haul itself out of the ranks of the world’s poorest and most dysfunctional states. And today the Irish Republic, which has turned itself in 40 years from one of the poorest countries in Western Europe to the second-richest, much of that with European Union help, votes on whether to approve the new, unifying EU treaty.