RIGHT-U.S.: Women’s March Goes Global

Women from Albania to Zambia joined hundreds of thousands of men and women from the United States on Sunday to charge that the Bush administration's assault on women's reproductive health rights is costing lives worldwide.

RIGHTS-EAST ASIA: Compensated Dating Picks up among Youngsters

Children from financially secure homes across East Asia are being lured into the sex trade through a practice euphemistically known as 'compensated dating', child rights activists warned here Monday.

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Abandoned Babies Find a Home

She calls her youngest, three-year-old Bakhtawar, a godsend, the luckiest thing that has ever happened to her. To think Bakhtawar is not even her own flesh and blood. Walking past a garbage dump on her way to work one morning three years ago, Zarina, a middle-aged divorced mother of four and a masseuse by profession, saw a slight movement in a sack.

RIGHTS-INDIA: Chaining of Drug Addicts Creates Stir

With their ankles shackled, scores of heroin addicts hobble around the crowded yard of their rehabilitation centre in a remote narcotics-ridden region here in north-eastern India, in a unique de-addiction programme.

RIGHTS-CHILE: Supreme Court Is Last Hope for Lesbian Mother

Chile's Supreme Court is due to decide next month whether a lesbian mother has the right to raise her daughters in the home she created with another woman after separating from her husband.

RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Violence Stains National Day of Indigenous Peoples

As indigenous communities in Brazil demanded recognition of their right to their ancestral territories on National Day of Indigenous peoples, commemorated Monday, the problem of land disputes was highlighted by the mass killing of at least 29 illegal diamond miners in an Indian reserve.

POPULATION: ‘Brain Drain’ a Headache or Cure?

When Shailesh migrated to the United States from his hometown in Nepal a few years ago, he worried often how he would find enough work to survive. But within a few months he got the job of his choice, something that many among his fellow immigrants would describe as a lottery ticket.

SOCIETY-TAIWAN: Foreign Brides Reflect Changing Demographics

Taiwan's ambitious drive to modernise and be the envy of its Asian neighbours is producing at least one unforeseen social result - the rapid ethnic remake of this once almost-homogenous society as more migrants and foreign brides come in.

BRAZIL: A New Approach to Poverty – Why Are Some People Rich?

After decades of focusing on poverty in the search for ways to fight the enormous rich-poor gap in Brazil, researchers are now turning their gaze towards the wealthy.

MEXICO: Central American Migrants Face Dangers and Abuses

Oscar Medrano from Honduras lost a leg and 2,000 dollars - a veritable fortune for a poor, would-be immigrant - in his attempt to make it across Mexico on his way to the United States after paying a ''coyote'' or people trafficker.

VIETNAM: Disabled Veterans and Families Struggle to Advance

Wounded during the war against the United States, known outside as the Vietnam War, Phan Tat Thanh returned to his hometown in north-western Yen Bai province and set up a firm producing silver and gold jewelry to help his former brothers in arms.

SOCIETY-INDIA: Mayor’s Plans to Legalise Sex Work Triggers Debate

Bold plans by the mayor of this eastern Indian city to legalise sex work - the first time a public official has called for such - have triggered a debate between those who say it is time to legitimise its existence to protect human rights, and others who argue that it cannot even be done under the law.

SAUDI ARABIA: Despite Social Restrictions, Jobs Keep Migrants Staying

Abdul Rahman Abdel Qader says he has a simple slogan that keeps things in perspective for him in Saudi Arabia, and in life in general.

BRAZIL: Gang War Has Rio Police, Residents Scrambling for Solutions

"I almost had a heart attack. The gunshots seemed like they were being fired inside my house. The walls shook and my blood pressure went sky high," says Roseli Gomes, resident of Rocinha, the "favela" where drug gangs and the police have been clashing for the past four days.

LATIN AMERICA: ‘I’ll Have to Work Till I Die’

''I'll just have to work till I die. I have no other option,'' says Miguel González, 73, in Chile, just one of the large proportion of elderly in Latin America who are not covered by the social security system.

THAILAND: Migrant Workers Yet to See Legal Win Become Reality

Soe Tin bears the burden of being a condemned man in Mae Sot, a town along the Thailand's north-western border that has attracted thousands of migrant workers from neighbouring Burma.

RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Rohingya Asylum Seekers Have Little to Cling To

Over a dozen sweaty and angry Rohingya men gathered in a small and grubby fifth-floor room of a walk-up flat in Pudu, a suburb outside the Malaysian capital famous for its wet market, thriving counterfeit trade and scores of small Chinese-owned printing presses.

RIGHTS-RWANDA: Women Survivors of the Rwandan Genocide Face Grim Realities

Mamerthe Karuhimbi was 19 when the killers came to her home in the Rwandan town of Nyamata, a decade ago.

CHINA-TAIWAN: Intermarriages Mix Love, Suspicion, Torn Loyalties

-Amid the longstanding enmity between mainland China and separately-ruled Taiwan, intermarriages between people from both sides have been taking place -stories of love, hatred, suspicion and torn loyalties that could well rival Shakespearean dramas.

RIGHTS: Sudan Genocide Echoes Rwanda, Experts Say

The United Nations and aid and human rights groups are warning that the international community is about to witness a genocidal massacre on the scale of the Rwanda ethnic slayings that killed up to 800,000 people exactly one decade ago.

RIGHTS-JAPAN: Amid Terrorism Fears, Activists See More Repression

Japan's social harmony is not known for encouraging grassroots activism, but the rise in global terrorism is fast slamming the door shut on what little room they have, say human rights groups here.