Female voters in Brazil could ensure an easy victory this October for the ruling Workers Party candidate, Dilma Rousseff. But recent polls seem to indicate that it is women themselves who are most reluctant to elect the country’s first female president.

Thailand and other major rice exporting countries are at risk of losing Africa as an important trading partner if they raise their rice prices. Half of the 10 million tons of rice exported by Thailand last year went to Africa. Nigeria, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire and South Africa were among the main buyers of rice in Africa.

Cuban President Raúl Castro announced a series of measures to gradually reduce the 'considerably bulky' payrolls in the government sector, with excess estimated at around one-fifth of the economically active population.

Gonaives, the third largest city in Haiti, is rushing to prepare for an expected highly active hurricane season. The city was flooded by three hurricanes in the past six years - Hannah and Ike in 2008, and Jeanne, which killed at least 2,500 people in 2004.

In a tiny village near Kisumu city in Kenya, scientific researcher Mary Anyango Oyunga spends most of her time educating women about something they have always done — grow sweet potatoes.

Contrary to recent media reports of a quick recovery in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists and biologists are 'deeply concerned' about impacts that will likely span 'several decades'.

Women's laughter fills the rectangular room on the ground floor of a building that houses a school for 250 local children, on the southern edge of Mexico City's sprawling metropolitan area.

Jerusalem is a city blessed but also cursed by its own holiness. No more so than here at 'Ground Zero', the religious epicentre within the walled Old City, beneath the most disputed holy site -- the Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary as known to Muslims, Har Habayit or the Temple Mount for Jews.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has slapped IMF in the face, shocking an international community used to news of economic difficulties coming from this small Central European nation. But most Hungarians have welcomed it, at least so far.

Yu Daihai, a 23-year-old college graduate from Dandong city in northern Liaoning province, uses his computer and mobile phone everyday to communicate with his friends. But technology is having an unwanted side effect: Yu, like a growing number of young Chinese, is starting to forget how to write his native language.