Fourteen-year-old Isaac Wadyegere of Bundesi village in Bududa district woke up to a rainy and chilly Monday morning and went to school as usual. But Mar. 1 was not a usual day in Bududa district in eastern Uganda. When he heard the sound of rocks and soil tumbling down Mountain Elgon on a path to destroy part of his school, Wadyegere, along with other pupils, fled home.

African hip-hop prides itself on a more positive portrayal of women, but traditional cultural attitudes towards women still dominate the industry, say Namibian female rappers.

Science fiction blockbuster Avatar was the big loser in the Oscar awards ceremony - not only a blow for director James Cameron but also seen as a symbolic reverse in the struggle to recover Amazon rainforest areas in Ecuador from the effects of oil pollution.

Although the Peruvian government reported that it had suspended the exploration activities of the Afrodita mining company in the country's northern Amazon jungle region to avoid further protests by local indigenous people, officials took no actual steps to bring the firm's work to a halt.

Climate change science has come under full-scale attack in a last-ditch effort to delay or prevent action by the U.S. government against global warming, experts warn.

Perched near the top of a steep hill, the fractured pink walls of Villa Manrese overlook the rest of the capital city. Both ends of the three-story compound have collapsed, spilling into mounds of rubble. The first floor was pulverised into a layer of dust. There are still bodies inside.

Mercy Gondwe, 51, from Rumphi in northern Malawi, was married for 34 years. When her husband died in 2008, she assumed she would inherit the land they had been cultivating together since they got married. But this was not the case.

'What do I get from them? Nothing but bullsh*t,' says Nupur Acharya, reflecting about how she is treated by her husband and two grown sons on daily basis.

Cambodia’s new penal code, which comes into force later this year, should be accompanied by stronger law enforcement measures if the country’s women and girls are to be better protected from rape, says the global rights lobby Amnesty International (AI).

The climate of fear that has been growing in this Himalayan country since the murder of two media entrepreneurs and other attacks on journalists may well push them to turn to more self-censorship.