HEALTH-BRAZIL: Education, the Only Weapon Against Dengue

After taking a number of emergency measures to combat the current dengue epidemic in Rio de Janeiro, health officials in Brazil have committed themselves to investing in education and awareness-raising in the future, as the only effective means of preventing further outbreaks of the disease.

KENYA: Free Secondary Schooling Policy Faces Testing Times

When Kenya's government introduced free primary schooling in 2003, vast numbers of additional pupils were brought into the education system overnight, putting it on a steep learning curve.

EDUCATION-PAKISTAN: Religious Schools – Boon or Bane?

Mehboob Illahi, 15, cannot wait to leave Pakistan and the Jamia Binoria, the largest madrassa (religious school) in Karachi, forever.

THAILAND: Islamic Teachers Blamed For Violent Separatism

As Thailand’s new government searches for fresh options to quell an escalating insurgency in the country’s south, its stance towards the region’s pondoks (Islamic schools), will be keenly watched.

POLITICS: A Textbook Tale of Two Reports

Iran's post-revolutionary education system continues to teach children to discriminate against women and religious minorities, according to a report released Tuesday by Freedom House, a Washington-based nonprofit group that seeks to encourage democracy in the world.

KENYA: Education Amidst Displacement

With the new academic year in Kenya underway, teacher Moses Simiyu Kalenda is once again instructing children - just not in the place where he expected to be doing so.

BRAZIL: Small Fishermen Trade in Nets for Oyster Farms

In a modest restaurant on a beach at the southern tip of the Brazilian island of Florianópolis, a couple celebrates, with champagne and oysters, "one more year of vacations and love."

LEBANON: Children Get to Work Early

Walid is a wide-eyed boy of 10. His frail figure, of the kind common in such poverty-stricken areas, seems smaller than for a child his age. His hands are covered in dirt and paint. Here, in Ard Jalloul (the land of Jalloul), located in the populous Tarik Jdideh neighbourhood of Beirut, he works as a painter from 8am to 6pm for 7 dollars a day.

BRAZIL: Keeping Indigenous Identity Intact in “Urban Village”

"I desperately want to go back. I feel like I’m living in a prison here, but I stay on because I love my children," says Conceição Gonçalves, who misses the indigenous village of Taunay where she lived until last year, when she moved to the capital of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

Q&A: As Civil Wars End, Child Soldiers Decline

The number of child soldiers, who are forcibly pressed into military service in conflicts worldwide, has declined: from about 300,000 in 1997 to an estimated 250,000 now, says U.N. Under-Secretary-General Radhika Coomaraswamy.

BRAZIL: Guarani Education Empowers Women Leaders

Leia Aquino gave up her plans to work in a hospital in order to be near her husband, a nurse, the day she saw a motorcyclist badly injured in an accident. Her aversion to the sight of so much blood led her to become a teacher instead, and now she runs a school for indigenous children on the Brazil-Paraguay border.

RELIGION-CUBA: Catholic Church Wants More Freedom to Do Its Work

Ten years after the historic visit to Cuba by Pope John Paul II, who passed away in 2005, the Catholic Church continues to call for "unlimited" scope and "due freedom" for its social action initiatives in this socialist country, as one of its most important demands.

SCIENCE: Latin America Lags in Innovation and Technology

Brazil is the world leader in manufacturing small aircraft. In Argentina it was discovered that substances in the impotence drug Viagra can also treat sleep disorders. A non-polluting reactor was developed in Mexico to separate gold and silver from ore. All of this thanks to the work of home-grown scientists.

LABOUR: ‘Migrants More Likely To Be Overqualified’

Rich countries must do more to integrate migrants into their societies and labour markets if they want to reap the economic benefits of skilled migration, says an OECD report released in Paris Wednesday.

LATIN AMERICA: Gender Stereotypes Still Firmly Entrenched, Despite Progress

Constructing gender equality in Latin American societies remains an apparently arduous task. The issue is still confined to the ivory towers of academia, far away from the media, and is seldom included in the debates that really capture people’s attention.

Q&A: World&#39s Children Have Progressed and Regressed

Most of the world's 2.2 billion children are languishing in extreme poverty, ignorance and exploitation, according to Reverend Keishi Miyamoto, who is described as the guiding spirit behind the Tokyo-based Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC).

ASTRONOMY-COLOMBIA: Dazzled by Stars, Dreams and Doubts

Esteban Felipe is six years old and wants to be a policeman when he grows up. Or better still, an astronomer, he says as he plays with a plastic rocket that he decorated with coloured paper at one of the children’s workshops at the 11th Festival of self-taught astronomers.

CUBA: Student Denies Arrest, Says Criticism Was ‘Within the System’

A Cuban university student who made headlines around the world when a videotape of him questioning aspects of the country’s socialist system was posted on the Internet defended his right Tuesday to express constructive criticism from within the system and said that contrary to rumour, he was never arrested for speaking out.

ARGENTINA: Public Employees Go for IT

In keeping with its aim to shore up the strong role played by the state, which was badly weakened during the years when free-market economic policies were predominant, the Argentine government is implementing a successful programme of electronic learning for its employees that is already being requested by a dozen Latin American countries interested in replicating the experience.

IRAQ: The Road to Learning Can Be Dangerous

University professors now enjoy increased pay, but in the face of threats and isolation, there is little they are able to do in the world of academics.

RIGHTS: Ignoring Girls&#39 Welfare Carries High Price

Investing in young women and girls in developing regions must be a top priority for governments, multilateral agencies and the private sector, say the authors of a report released here this week.