'I told my husband if he ever hits me (again), I’ll pack up and go to my parents who live just round the corner, and he will lose the land I got,' says Jannat Gul of Tando Bagho village here in this southern Pakistani district. Her husband has not hit her for the past six months — since Gul became the owner of some 1.6 hectares of land.

The Turkish General Directorate of Forestry claims to devote the bulk of its resources to combating forest fires, but it is passively observing the Turkish army ignite forested areas in the country's predominantly Kurdish southeastern region.

In New Zealand, where Sujinrat Prachathai enjoys resident status, she is a woman able to append ‘Mrs’ to her name to signify that she is married. Here in Thailand, however, she has to be addressed as ‘Mr’ since she is still considered male even though she underwent a sex-change operation years ago.

Six months ago Monday, an earthquake rocked the western hemisphere's poorest country, driving it deeper into poverty and burying it under its nascent infrastructure.

Depending on whom you asked, Friday's statement from the U.N. condemning the 'attack' on a South Korean warship was either a victory for those countries seeking to publicly shame North Korea or a failure of the international community to sufficiently assign blame to Pyongyang for the incident.

The FIFA Football World Cup is presented -- and felt emotionally by millions -- as a contest amongst countries in which national honour is at stake. But it is also a private business, controlled by a small group of people who exploit patriotism and foment rivalries in marketing the 'product.'

The incidence of cardiovascular, respiratory and water-borne diseases is rising in Uruguay in tandem with climate change, while dengue fever and malaria lurk at the country's borders. Higher temperatures are encouraging the presence of insect vectors carrying diseases that were eradicated decades ago, experts say.

The Zambian National Constitution Conference (NCC) concluded its business recently with the adoption of a clause for the creation of a Gender Equality Commission.

Unmindful of the monsoons lashing the Dehradun area in the Himalayan foothills in northern India, Girdhari Singh returns from work daily with a headload of wood that he finds along the road, and stacks it to dry in the cattleshed.

African countries should deepen their tax bases to collect more revenues to finance their development, build state institutions and to improve national dialogue and, more generally, their social contracts with citizens.