The ‘Flattening’ of Gaza

On Nov. 17, four days into Israel’s eight-day assault on the Gaza Strip, deputy Israeli Prime Minister Eli Yishai publicly called for the Israeli army to “blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water”.

Fresh Air for the Rio Olympics

Environmental authorities in this southeastern Brazilian city are installing more air quality control stations in the locations where competitions are to be held during the 2016 Olympic Games, so that air pollution will not hurt the athletes’ performance.

Q&A: Will the BRICS Bury IBSA?

China’s presence in the leading developing nations alliance of Brazil, Russia, India and China has given the bloc an advantage that another developing nations club, India, Brazil and South Africa, has hitherto been lacking, according to Peter Draper, one of South Africa’s leading experts on international relations and trade.

Africa Cashes in on Mineral Wealth

Many of the fastest-growing countries in the world are in Africa, the poorest continent on the planet, but the potential for recently-discovered resources to generate broad-based inclusive development opportunities is massive and remains under-exploited.

The Industrialisation of Africa’s Smallholder Agriculture

Africa’s smallholder farmers, who contribute 80 percent of food and agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa and much of the world’s food supply, are being encouraged by big business, governments and NGOs to become less subsistence based and more entrepreneurial by tailoring production to market forces.

Thousands Orphaned by Poverty in Kashmir

Seventeen-year-old Afzal is an unusual orphan. Though his father died many years ago, his mother is still alive and living with Afzal’s grandparents and younger siblings in a house not far from the orphanage where the boy has spent most of his teenage years.

Funding Shortage Thwarts Reconstruction Efforts

The landscape in northern Sri Lanka’s former war zone can change abruptly from the ordinary to the surreal.

India Looks to Diverse Strategy on Disability

Twenty-year-old Reshma, hailing from the village of Aryanad in the Thiruvananthapuram district of the South Indian state of Kerala, was forced to drop out of school early as a result of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Bedouin Seek Democracy in Israel

As campaign posters pop up around Israel ahead of the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections, Bedouin citizens of the state are still reeling after being denied the chance to elect their own local council representatives.

Africa’s Mobile Health Revolution

A nurse working in a remote clinic in Mueda, a small town in northern Mozambique’s Makonde Plateau, receives a shipment of vaccines from the national health department. Using special software on her mobile phone, she sends out a mass text message to alert mothers in the area about the availability of immunisations.

Kerry Chosen for U.S. Secretary of State, Hagel Still in Limbo

U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Massachusetts Senator John Kerry on Friday to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, calling him "the perfect choice to guide American diplomacy in the years ahead".

Q&A: “It’s Time to Wage War on Homophobia”

For more than two decades, the internationally beloved singer and human rights activist Yvonne Chaka Chaka has been at the forefront of the South African pop music scene.

Latin America Hosts Artists-in-Residence

Artists-in-residence, once found only in the industrialised North, can now be found throughout Latin America, which is hosting artists from different parts of the world to produce and exhibit their work. There are also opportunities for visiting artists simply to seek inspiration.

Salvaging Waste Food for the Hungry in Spain

A recurring question in crisis-stricken Spain is how to ensure that surplus agricultural products reach those most in need. One response is citizen initiatives to protest the waste of food and to advocate efficient management along the full length of the food chain.

New Patient Profile and Treatment for Chagas Disease

Chagas disease, the third most serious infectious disease in Latin America, is developing a “new face” and moving into urban areas, while a new treatment may offer hope for millions of sufferers.

The Politics of Polio in Pakistan

The murder of nine health workers vaccinating children against polio in Pakistan’s northwest cities of Peshawar and Charsadda in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, and its southern port city Karachi, have elicited shock and outrage.

The Race for a Peaceful Election

Runners Hosea Nailel and Julius Muriuki, who are from Kenya’s rival ethnic Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities respectively, met during a half marathon when they broke away from the pack and remained in the leading group. 

Forests, Fruit and Fish Could Save Coastal Communities

Scientists predict that in the coming years, Bangladesh will be battered by even more climate disasters than it has already endured. Global warming has caused devastating damage in this lower Himalayan delta country of 150 million people, where seawater intrusion, increasingly intense cyclones, dried up rivers and extreme weather events have become the norm.

Anti-Prostitution Campaign Picks Up Speed

In a small dingy room on the edge of a brothel in west Kolkata, capital of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, a 42-year-old former sex worker is trying to eke out a living selling cooked food in her neighbourhood, while tending to her sick husband and a paralysed son.

Internal Audit Warns of IMF Politicisation by the U.S.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s internal auditor has criticised the Fund’s recent policy on foreign currency reserves, and has offered an implicit warning that the United States’ outsized influence within the institution has resulted in policy that was insufficiently evidence-based.

Colombian Landowners, Peasants Listen to Each Other

Colombia's large-scale agricultural producers and peasant farmers managed to listen to each other for the first time about the core cause of the decades-long armed conflict: the concentration of rural land ownership and the social and economic development of the countryside.