A longstanding proposal for the creation of a special U.N. agency for women - officially called a 'gender entity' - is apparently moving at the sluggish pace of a paralytic snail.

The deafening silence of Latin American governments has fallen like another shovelful of earth on the grave of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata, a bricklayer who died Feb. 23 after nearly three months on hunger strike in prison on the Caribbean island.

For some seven million Congolese living in Kinshasa the only meat and poultry they could buy to eat since the 1980s was frozen imports from Western countries, distributed locally by a few local businessmen.

When Legal Momentum, a U.S. advocacy group that works with all aspects of gender in the legal system, started its National Judicial Education Programme in 1980, gender discrimination was an unacknowledged problem in the country's courtrooms.

Last year, Kuwaitis elected their first female members of Parliament. Yet in countries like Yemen, child marriage remains common and personal status laws still discriminate against women in matters concerning marriage, divorce and child custody.

Guatemala knows that when it comes time to demonstrate compliance with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of global anti-poverty and development target to be met by 2015, it will make a poor showing.

Chile has begun to think about the costs and challenges of rebuilding a large part of the areas hit by the Feb. 27 earthquake and tsunami, while rescue and aid operations continue.

Community radio is moving from the margins to the mainstream in many countries in Asia, carving out spaces from where they respond to public needs ranging from disaster management to gender awareness, cultural identity and belonging.

Drug traffickers are increasing imports of precursor chemicals used for processing opium poppy into heroin and morphine, according to a new State Department report released here Monday.

Pollution, oil spills and difficult living conditions are some of the challenges that fishermen in this eastern Mediterranean country face daily.