'We swam the whole day to get hold of the elderly and women swept away by floodwaters,' recalled 27-year-old Shahid Ali of Charsadda district, one of the areas in north-western Pakistan badly hit by devastating monsoon rains.

With her knees shaking and her heart thudding, Toshiko Hamamako rose to address the audience. But it was more than stage fright.

Drug users and doctors legally prescribing substitution drugs to addicts -- a key tool in the battle with the country's growing HIV epidemic -- are facing illegal police intimidation and imprisonment, HIV/AIDS activists in the Ukraine say. Fears are rising that the country's approach to the disease could be changing for the worse.

Compared to most internally displaced Kurds in northern Iraq, Shamal Qadir is almost lucky. Since the Turkish army devastated his village, Kuzine, in a bombing raid Jul. 1, he's been living in a schoolhouse, where room temperatures are comfortable and basic amenities are accessible.

Dusk creeps over Konweva like a black shroud slowly draping over the village. The edges of its paddy fields, where the agricultural plains meet the surrounding thick shrubs, are first to be blanketed in the darkness. Already, there are signs that the night will not be peaceful.

Ongoing factional disputes and mounting international sanctions have ignited heated debates among Iran's elites about another critical period in the country's post- revolutionary history - the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

The latest political and diplomatic conflict between Colombia and Venezuela has coincided with celebrations of the bicentennial of the two countries' independence, won by their common liberator Simón Bolívar, whose ideals of integration continue to be undermined.

For the last nine years Brazil has led the world in recycling aluminium cans, of which it reuses 96.5 percent, and it now has a strong chance of reaching the 100 percent mark.

Led by the local church, residents of Gungu administrative zone, in the southwestern Democratic Republic of Congo have used their own resources to transform the conditions in which their children study.

Nancy Njeri’s life changed when she contracted HIV through a gang rape. Not only did the infection traumatise her, she was ostracised by close friends and neighbours whom she had known for almost a decade. She was fired from her job and when she attempted to sell vegetables, people boycotted her stand because of her status.