ENVIRONMENT-MALAWI: Waste Not, Want Not

In many parts of Malawi, discussing human excreta is taboo. The mere mention of faeces, in any of the country's 10 official languages, makes those taking part in the conversation uncomfortable. But, excreta could be about to gain respectability.

DEVELOPMENT-KENYA: UN Chief Will Help Humanise Slums

Kibera, Kenya's biggest slum, and reportedly one of Africa's largest, has been basking in world media attention recently.

LATIN AMERICA: Kids Pay Dearly for Lack of Clean Water

In Latin America and the Caribbean, one-third of childhood deaths are the result of diarrhoea. The problem could be resolved with clean water and appropriate sanitation systems, but millions of people, especially the indigenous and Afro-descendant populations, lack access to either.

DEVELOPMENT: Report Details Toll Taken by Lack of Water, Sanitation

The 2006 Human Development Report, 'Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis', focuses on the ongoing problems that surround provision of potable water and sanitation. The document is being launched Thursday in Cape Town, South Africa, by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

DEVELOPMENT-KENYA: Flying Toilets Still Airborne

An overflowing pit latrine empties its contents in a thick stream of worm-infested filth at the doorstep of Catherine Kithuku's home in Matopeni, a slum on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

DEVELOPMENT-KENYA: Portrait of a Shantytown

Paul Opiyo sits outside his corrugated iron shack in Kibera, chuckles ruefully and shrugs. "I know the life here is rotten, but what do I do? It's no better than if I stayed in the village; at least here I survive with whatever comes by the day," he says.

DEVELOPMENT: Sanitation, the Great Liberator?

A high-level focus on sanitation in sub-Saharan Africa could help fast-track the Millennium Development Goals and free women on the continent from a cycle of poverty, child mortality and low productivity.

DEVELOPMENT: Squatters Show the Way to Better Sanitation

-Mohammad Shamsuddin, still grimaces when he recalls the ''swarming flies and mosquitoes, over-flowing soak-pits, bucket latrines and the sludge and the sewage'' as also the quarrels in Orangi as to whose rubbish and waste was causing the foul smell.

DEVELOPMENT: Water Is Life, But Sanitation Is Dignity

The United Nations estimates that 2.6 billion people, including over 700 million in India, do not have the luxury of household toilets or the privacy of a secluded latrine.

DEVELOPMENT: U.N. Summit Neglects Clean Water, Say Experts

The statistics are staggering: one person out of every five alive today lacks access to a safe water supply, and two in five do not even have basic sanitation.

DEVELOPMENT: Giving the Gift of Life to 100 Million Slum Dwellers

Senior U.N. officials and civil society groups are urging the rich industrialised countries to increase funding for developing nations struggling to provide clean drinking water, sanitation and affordable hosing to millions of poor.

SOUTH ASIA: Neglect of Sanitation Still Killing Children

''Think of it as 20 jumbo jets full of children crashing every single day,'' said Ravi Narayanan, referring to the estimated 6,000 children worldwide who die daily of diseases related directly to the absence of sanitation.

ENVIRONMENT: New Attempts to Eliminate Nairobi&#39s &#39Flying Toilets&#39

''Please don't step on any plastic. It might contain a bomb!'' warns John Murage, assistant project officer for the African Medical Research Foundation's (Amref) Integrated Primary Health Care Programme in Nairobi's Kibera slums.