CUBA: Shoring Up the Educational System

In the new school year, which begins next Monday, Cuba’s educational system will be trying out several changes aimed at overcoming the decline in the quality of teaching, blamed on a shortage of teachers and other problems.

EDUCATION-MEXICO: Teachers and Students Failing Exams

Assessments of student performance at primary and secondary schools in Mexico have produced dismal results, as have evaluations of new teachers, who have to pass exams before being appointed to a teaching post.

SOUTH AFRICA: Rights Work Hampered by Closure Threat

The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) last week lifted a funding ban on its Centre for Civil Society (CCS) after national and international intellectuals protested loudly against the leftist centre’s potential closure. Yet, the uncertainty of the past few weeks has already impacted negatively on CCS’ operations.

BRAZIL: Producing Guitars and Luthiers in the Rainforest

Cuban instrument-maker or luthier Raúl Lage came for six months, but has already spent seven and a half years in Manaus, the city in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. "The project is really fantastic," he says, explaining why he plans to renew his work contract again in September.

SOUTH AMERICA: Architecture Students Visit 50 Cities in 40 Days

A group of advanced architecture students and graduates from Argentina will tour more than 50 cities in their own country, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay to discover common characteristics in the architectural heritage of the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) countries.

MALAYSIA: Proposal to Liberalise Campuses Weak – Students

For nearly four decades undergraduates in this country were banned from owning loud hailers - a powerful symbol of dissent in the 1970s.

UKRAINE: Russian Language Toned Down

Russian speakers in Ukraine say the lack of state recognition for the biggest linguistic minority in Europe amounts to discrimination, but opponents argue that recognition will endanger the development of Ukrainian language.

IRAQ: Students Fail, Like So Much Else

Living from one crisis to another, without electricity or freedom to move under a collapse of security, massive numbers of Iraqi students are failing their exams.

HEALTH: Time To Base Public Policy On Rights

Preaching abstinence to the young has not worked, nor has sex work been eradicated. Experts gathered here for the 17th International AIDS Conference say it is time to put public policies under the microscope and see why they have failed.

Q&A: “Condoms Have To Be Used To Be Useful”

Of the over 30 million people living with HIV, half are women and the rate of infections in women is rising, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. What’s more, women’s rights groups say gender inequalities are fuelling the epidemic - there is an irrefutable feminisation of HIV.

RUSSIA: Plan Putina Faces Pitfalls

Now as Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin has started to pursue vigorously his own long-term strategic development plan that was used to garner votes during the last presidential elections.

CHINA: Cheap Schools Carried Terrible Cost

The silence surrounding investigations into why so many schools collapsed during China's massive earthquake in May suggests Beijing's reluctance to face up to the fact that the failure of government education policies is partly to blame for the deaths of thousands of children.

POLITICS-US: Vets Mull Wins and Losses in Benefits Fight

You could hear the joy in Patrick Campbell's voice as he reflected on U.S. President George W. Bush's signing Monday of a new GI Bill of Rights for veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

SOMALIA: Fighting for an Education

"I like to study, even though there is fighting everywhere in Mogadishu," says Bashir Gedi, a 15-year-old student in the Somalian capital. "Education is more important for me because if I can get an education, then I can help rebuild my country."

HEALTH-PORTUGAL: Latin American Doctors Fill the Breach

Portugal is trying to fill the vacuum left by the departure of many of the 2,000 Spanish doctors who have been contributing to the normal functioning of hospitals and clinics in the interior of the country, with Argentine, Cuban and Uruguayan doctors.

LATIN AMERICA: Quality of Life at School Boosts Learning

The school environment is the factor that makes the greatest difference in student learning in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to UNESCO’s Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE). Equality in the education system, however, is still a distant goal.

SOUTH PACIFIC: Poverty Breeds Child Labour and Sex Tourism

Beyond the fabulous palm-fringed beaches and cascading waterfalls of the islands of the Pacific is a sordid reality - child labour and commercial sexual exploitation of children.

CANADA: Apology Must Be Backed By Action, Native Leaders Say

In a long-sought acknowledgement of the federal government's role in creating Canada's racist residential school system as part of its cultural assimilation policies, Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered a formal apology to Canadian First Nations in the House of Commons in Ottawa last week.

PAKISTAN: Call to Demilitarise Aid

U.S. aid to Pakistan needs to put far greater emphasis on education and far less on the military than it has to date, a Brussels conference has been told.

GREECE: And What an 18th Birthday Gift

Eighteen years after their birth in Greece, children of immigrants are suddenly made migrants, and asked to prove their right to live in a country where they were born and raised.

PARAGUAY: University Students on the March Again

After nearly two decades of apathy, the university student movement in Paraguay has made a comeback, demanding a law to grant them rebates on public transport fares and opposing a draft law on higher education reform.