The Costa Rican government has declared retirement communities, aimed at attracting U.S. pensioners, to be 'of national interest.' Plans to create 'retirement clusters' providing complete health services for older adults are seen as a profitable prospect for this Central American country.

While South African parliamentarians attended a swanky pre-International Women’s Day celebration at Cape Town’s International Convention Centre, a group of destitute women in decaying Kewtown, just seven miles away, worried about looming homelessness.

With assured backing from India's main opposition groups, the ruling Congress party hopes to see voted through in the upper house of Parliament Monday a bill reserving 33 percent of seats in national and provincial legislatures for women.

Dressed in an abaya (long, loose gown worn by women to cover their dress) and a headscarf, Naseem Hameed cannot be recognised as she alights from a crowded, rickety public bus to reach her destination — the sports stadium.

The process of making corn tortillas - the filling, age-old traditional food throughout much of Mexico and Central America - pollutes huge volumes of water and consumes a great deal of energy.

As Iraqis go to the polls on Sunday, a key question in the minds of many in Iraq and Washington is whether secular candidates can continue their recent rise and possibly come out as winners.

As they slept soundly on the night of Feb. 28, a family of four was killed when their house collapsed over their heads in Malawi’s southern district of Chikhwawa.

The vast majority of the species protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, live on land, but as marine species come under increasing pressure from unsustainable fishing and a range of climate change-related threats that focus is beginning to shift.

A new scandal has increased the pressure on the conservative religious order Legion of Christ, one of the most influential in the Catholic Church, to compensate the victims of alleged sexual abuse by its founder, Mexican priest Marcial Maciel, and carry out internal reforms.

Thursday's vote by a Congressional committee condemning the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I as 'genocide' is almost certain to complicate U.S. ties with Turkey, a long-time strategic ally and increasingly influential player in the Middle East and central and southwest Asia.