CHINA: Taklamakan – Desert With No Ocean Underground

When the city of Korla rose from the Taklamakan desert in mid-1950s, it was marvelled as a triumph of human willpower over adverse nature. Thousands of soldiers dispatched by the Chinese communist party put this place on the map in China's far west Xinjiang, by digging 600 km of channels to coax underground water to large collective farms.

POLITICS-INDIA: Gov’t Report Shakes Claims to Pluralism

India, which has long prided itself as a shining example of democracy and religious-cultural pluralism, is being forced to contend with an unpleasant truth: the foundations of its claim to religious integration and harmony may be far shakier than earlier believed.

ENVIRONMENT: Billions Needed to Climate-Proof Africa

Climate change will devastate Africa without substantial help from the world community, according to a new report released at the opening of a major U.N. climate change conference in Nairobi, Kenya Monday.

RIGHTS: Women’s Groups Push for Gender Parity in OAS

Women's groups in Latin America have launched a campaign to press the Organisation of American States (OAS), which has never had a female secretary general, to live up to the principle of gender parity at the highest levels, where women are remarkable only for their absence.

CORRUPTION: In a Downward Spiral with Poverty

Transparency International has pointed to a strong correlation between corruption and poverty in a report released Monday. A cluster of poorer states sits at the bottom of its 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index.

IBERO-AMERICA: Summit Makes No Commitment to Legal Status for Migrants

The final statement signed by the leaders meeting this weekend in the 16th Ibero-American summit, the "Montevideo Commitment", includes no commitment to regularising the status of undocumented migrant workers.

DEVELOPMENT: Microcredit Summit Hopes to Kickstart MDGs

Hundreds of financial experts and activists are due to gather in the Canadian city of Halifax next weekend to explore new ways of helping the world's rural poor with small business loans.

DEVELOPMENT: Ireland Offers Malawi Aid After HIPC Compliance

Malawi's compliance with the requirements of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative has opened the door to a commitment by Ireland to increase aid to the Southern African country.

ASIA: Workers’ Remittances as Development Funds?

Migrant rights activists are eyeing a regional conference starting here Monday to secure more protection for the frequently victimised overseas labour force. It comes as governments here, as elsewhere, are warming up to convert the millions being sent home by migrant workers for local development programmes.

DEVELOPMENT-LESOTHO: Pension System Works, Despite IMF Scepticism

Twenty dollars seems a meagre amount, but it has brought an end to backbreaking toil and food insecurity for many of Lesotho's elderly.

CAMBODIA: Visit Angkor Wat, Educate a Child

For thousands of daily visitors to the sprawling 12th century Buddhist monument of Angkor Wat, it is a hassle avoiding touts attempting to selling souvenirs and postcards. But most are happy to see the saffron-clad monks and pose with them for photographs.

ARGENTINA: Silent Extinction of Mbya Guarani People

Mbya Guaraní children living in the subtropical rainforests of Argentina's northeastern province of Misiones are dying from preventable illnesses, and extra provision by the government of money, medicine and food seems unable to halt the catastrophe.

ENVIRONMENT: Ocean Life on the Brink of No Return

Every single commercial fishery in the world will be wiped before 2050 and the oceans may never recover if over-fishing continues at its current rate, a four-year scientific investigation has found.

INDIA: Patents Case Challenges the World

Médecins Sans Frontières and other groups campaigning for access to affordable medicines in developing countries are closely following a case filed by the Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis against Indian patent law.

BOTSWANA: Unemployment Surges as Government Plans Fail to Take Off

Botswana is still widely cited as Africa's economic success story, but fears are emerging of a reversal because of soaring unemployment and the sluggish implementation of government plans.

DEVELOPMENT: UN Chief Says Youth Key to Poverty Fight

With less than two months before he steps down as secretary-general after a long 10-year tenure, Kofi Annan is disappointed that the international community is lagging behind in its much-touted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including a 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

ASIA: North Koreans Flee Looming Famine

The recent arrest of 91 North Korean defectors in Thailand's northernmost province of Chiang Rai has brought into relief the conditions driving such flight: hunger and growing food shortages, according to humanitarian agencies.

ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Eye on Urban Water Pollution

Around 30 million people are affected by water contamination in Brazil's two biggest metropolitan areas. In Sao Paulo, this means water shortages. In Rio de Janeiro, the water supply itself is not diminished, but pollution threatens to make it useless for human consumption.

DEVELOPMENT: Belgium Increases Aid to Rwanda

During the next four years, Belgium will provide Rwanda with about 168 million dollars worth of development aid. This sum is to be spread among various sectors, with agriculture and health receiving priority. About 74.4 million dollars has been allocated for the development of agriculture, and some 48 million dollars for the health sector.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Think Global, Eat Local

It's certainly a logical suggestion: in an effort to make cocoa-producing countries in Africa less dependent on consumers abroad, why not increase domestic consumption of cocoa products?

ENVIRONMENT-CHINA: Taklamakan – Where Oil and Water Don’t Mix

It takes two people to do it. To keep a watch on the desert road which emerges from the sands and disappears back into the sands. The cabin by the road where they live - the sole human dwelling that meets the eye in the flat, open infinity of the desert - is a well station, identified only as ‘no.27'.