HEALTH: Global Agenda Increasingly Disease-Driven

At the end of last month, U.S. President George W. Bush signed a global health package that effectively tripled U.S. spending over the next five years to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in poor countries, to 48 billion dollars.

DEVELOPMENT: South Africa Beats Deadline on Water, Sanitation

South Africa and Madagascar, two African nations participating in the Stockholm International Water Conference currently underway in the Swedish capital, provide a contrasting picture of where they stand - or fall - in achieving the U.N.'s heavily-trumpeted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

TRADE-TANZANIA: Cheap Imitation Goods Are Flooding Markets

The mishmash of shops in Tanzania's central Kariakoo market in Dar es Salaam stock an infinite array of brand name fakes. Throngs of customers snap up mobile phones, designer gear, high-tech electronics and gadgets - all imitations being sold at unbelievably low prices.

DEVELOPMENT: Wastewater Crops Feeding Millions

Vegetables, rice and other cereals in at least 53 cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America may someday come with warning labels that read "this is a byproduct of raw sewage".

ZIMBABWE: Farmers Can't Afford to Leave Markets – Literally

It is a wintry Tuesday evening at one of the tobacco auction floors in the Zimbabwean capital Harare. A group of small-scale tobacco farmers are preparing food for the night.

DEVELOPMENT: Water Progresses, Sanitation Regresses

The world's poorest nations are making halting progress in water, but little or no tangible improvement in sanitation - two of the basic necessities of life.

DEVELOPMENT-UGANDA: Looming Problems With Kampala's Water

The water supply for two million residents of the Ugandan capital Kampala is threatened by a combination of ill-planned urbanisation and changing rainfall patterns.

TRADE-AFRICA: ‘‘An Injury To One Market Is an Injury to All’’

Southern African non-governmental organisations have put forward demands to their governments in resistance to the continuing talks on economic partnership agreements (EPAs) between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Retailer Creates Jobs With Green Practices

Seven years ago, 54 subsistence farmers in the Umbumbulu district on the KwaZulu-Natal coast of South Africa were struggling to feed their families. They could barely pay their children’s school fees.

DEVELOPMENT: Escaping the Poverty Trap

What do they have in common - the landless widow with a deaf son in Bangladesh, the 12-year-old miner in Kyrgyzstan, the Ugandan farming couple with 12 children and the South African domestic worker who loses her home when her husband dies and her job when she breaks a leg? They, and their children, are trapped in chronic poverty, even as their countries show economic growth.

CUBA: Putting Their Houses in Order

In Cuba, when talk turns to the housing problem, the personal anecdotes that pour out are as large in number as the country's housing deficit, accumulated over years during which building efforts have not kept up with the need, while the existing houses and buildings continue to crumble.

Q&A: Women Do Most, With Least Assistance

The international debate on effective aid that is shaped by developing countries' needs rather than donors' priorities will be resumed when ministers from over 100 countries, and members of development agencies, donor organisations and civil society gather for the Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra Sep. 2-4.

CAMBODIA: 'Getting Decent Jobs for Women – The Challenge'

‘Women are cloth, men are gold’. This traditional Khmer saying is quoted by many studies on gender in Cambodia as emblematic of the different value accorded to men and women in this country of 14 million.

DEVELOPMENT-SOMALIA: Finding Water in Mogadishu

Pipes, reservoirs and water treatment plants in south and central Somalia have been extensively vandalised in the years since the collapse of Siad Barre's government in 1991. In the long absence of central authority, Mogadishu's residents have devised their own informal water distribution systems, but there are many shortcomings.

HEALTH: Safe Sex With HIV – and Without a Condom?

The Swiss Federal Commission for HIV/AIDS set off a small firestorm of debate by asserting that people living with the virus can have sexual relations without a condom and without endangering their uninfected partners, under certain conditions.

POLITICS: U.N. Renovation Threatens Disruption in World Body

When the United Nations begins a major 1.8 billion dollar renovation of its 39- storey headquarters early next year, there are fears that the relocation of nearly 4,000 staffers from the 60-year-old building will disrupt the organisational work of the world body.

HEALTH-US: HIV On The Rise

A new study shows that the annual number of HIV infections in the United States is greater than was previously believed. The findings place increased scrutiny on the country’s lack of a national HIV/AIDS program as well as the current Presidential candidates’ plans to combat the epidemic.

BRAZIL: Spreading the Cultural Tentacles of Inclusion

"Negro F" tells how the Manos Grafite (roughly, "Graphite Hands") group started. In 1996, he and his friend Alex were walking along a street in the outskirts of the capital of the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, when they were struck by the colours and forms painted on the walls.

TRADE: Malawi Still Hopeful That Investment Will Come

Malawi is on the prowl to extend its trade connections to different corners of the world, west and east. The small southern African country is hoping foreign investment will help it to become a producer and exporter rather than a consumer and importer economy, as is presently the case.

TRADE-WEST AFRICA: Overfishing Linked to Food Crisis, Migration

According to a recent report by the nongovernmental organisation ActionAid, West African seas are being devastated by legal and illegal overfishing, while local fishing industries decline. Moreover, the economic partnership agreements in their currently proposed form only exacerbate this problem.

HEALTH-UGANDA: Fight Against AIDS Faltering?

Uganda's approach to the fight against HIV/AIDS is under scrutiny by activists. The country has won international acclaim for its 20-year campaign against the AIDS pandemic, but the latest numbers lead some activists believe Uganda is now losing ground.