EGYPT: Battle For Women Judges Half Won

There are "no obstacles according to Islamic sharia, the constitution or the law" to women serving as judges, announced one of Egypt’s main courts, the State Council, last week. But "there are currently practical obstacles," it affirmed.

ZIMBABWE: ‘Farming God’s Way’

Mbuya Erica Chirimanyemba is a marvel among women, and men! Watching her digging holes in dry ground earlier this year, her neighbours thought the old lady had gone berserk. But 60-year-old Chirimanyemba was putting an alternative farming technique into practice.

TRADE: Something’s Rotten in European Supermarkets

The majority of European supermarkets failed to take adequate responsibility for labour conditions and fair-trade relationships in their food supply chains, a new report revealed.

HEALTH-KENYA: Funding Threatens AIDS Prevention

Pregnant mothers who are HIV-positive could soon find it challenging to access life-saving HIV drugs because Kenya was denied 270 million dollars in funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

AGRICULTURE-NAMIBIA: Turning to Wild Bean for Protein

Obed Kamburona has tried to grow many different crops on his large farm, but the dry sandy soil in Otjovanatje has thwarted him every time.

SIERRA LEONE: Plan For Sanitation Rests with Community

Lying forgotten in the bush somewhere is a sign declaring "Ogoo Farm is an open defecation-free community."

KENYA: Primary Education Under the Gun

The children are afraid. There are armed bandits hiding with stolen animals in the thickets behind Nawoyaregae Primary School in Kaputir Location.

NIGER: Livestock Herders Plan Ahead

The cows Djibo Hama looks after belong to someone else, but he is diligent. Anticipating a severe shortage of good grazing in 2010, he secured cattle feed for the 35 that remain.

DEVELOPMENT: Recovery Could Leave Behind World’s Poorest

The world's 49 least developed countries (LDCs), described as the poorest of the poor, could feel the effects of the global economic crisis for decades, a senior U.N. official warned this week.

SOUTH AFRICA: Men Battle Gender-based Violence

When Mbuyiselo Botha decided to take the African National Congress League President, Julius Malema, to court for hate speech against women, he was confident from the start that the case had merit. But he also knew that this would be the most challenging test of his 15 years of gender activism.

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Banking on Women

Rinki Kumari’s white laminate-topped desk at the Bank of India’s branch here in Sahdeokhap village in eastern Bihar state is easily the busiest, with men, women and even children crowding around her.

DEVELOPMENT: Mega-Inequality in Urban Mega-Regions

Basic services that are collapsing or non-existent, overcrowding, pollution: these are big-city problems that are compounded in developing countries by poverty and inequality.

URUGUAY: Improving Conditions for Waste Pickers

"The time will come when 80 percent of the raw material used by industry in Uruguay will be recycled waste products," Marcelo Conde, a 40-year-old garbage sorter who has been digging through trash for recyclables "for as long as I can remember," says with some pride.

FINANCE: IMF Proposes 100-Billion-Dollar Climate Fund

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published the first details of a proposed financing framework, dubbed the 'Green Fund', intended to mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with the consequences of climate change and mitigate further emissions.

ARTS-SOUTHERN AFRICA: Women Dancers Can Fill Granaries

"Some said, how can women dancers tell us about climate change? Some said, how can dancers talk about planting trees? Others asked, how can women dancers build schools? But now the government says a drum has managed to fill our granaries, a dancer has managed to build schools."

RIGHTS-UGANDA: Bearing the Pains of Double Discrimination

They endure stigma, discrimination, violence and extreme poverty, but Ugandan women living with disabilities say the greatest challenge facing them centres on their reproductive health.

HAITI: Watching the Sky with Dread

With the spring rains and hurricane season just around the corner in Haiti, some 600,000 people are still living in camps, many in areas prone to flooding. And plans to provide solutions for the survivors of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake are moving forward slowly.

URUGUAY: Agro-Export Boom May Have Lethal Consequences

Behind the explosive growth of the agriculture and plantation forestry industries in Uruguay lies clear proof of the indiscriminate use of chemical products that pose serious threats to the environment and human health.

DEVELOPMENT: Sanitation Goals Falter Amid Official Apathy

At the United Nations, "water and sanitation" have remained inseparable twins on the world body's social and economic agenda.

BRAZIL: Fewer Slum Dwellers Thanks to Upgrading

A United Nations report published ahead of the Fifth World Urban Forum in Brazil says the proportion of the population of this country living in "favelas" or shantytowns was reduced 16 percent between 2000 and 2010.

U.S.: Water Crisis High on Policy Agenda, Clinton Says

On a rainy morning here Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasised the centrality to U.S. foreign policy of addressing the world's water challenges.