As she leaves the community health centre in Abobo-Baule with her newborn baby, Abiba Tahoué is doubly satisfied.

An independent study has confirmed that extreme poverty in Nicaragua fell by 7.5 percentage points between 2005 and 2009, an achievement clouded by criticism of the environmental costs, a supposed lack of transparency and the paternalism of the country's social programmes.

A major weeklong international water conference opened in the Swedish capital Monday with an ominous warning: time is running out faster than fresh water.

The global economic crisis has taken its toll in Mexico, as elsewhere, leading thousands of people to turn to private employment agencies to find jobs -- even though some of their labour rights may be left unprotected.

It has been a long and exhausting wait for anti-death penalty campaigners like Akiko Takada, but there are few signs that capital punishment will be taken off Japan’s law books any time soon.

The midday sun punishes a group of veiled women as they wait in line to fill their buckets and jerrycans. They have travelled on foot to a rusty tap on the outskirts of Cairo that gushes irrigation water never intended for human consumption.

Roma gypsies are routinely described as Europe's largest ethnic minority. Numbering between 10 and 16 million, their combined population exceeds that of many European Union countries. Yet their numerical strength offers no compensation for the poverty, persecution and scapegoating that the Roma have to endure -- or for how their welfare is accorded a low priority by the EU's institutions.

Fears about loss of privacy are being voiced as India gears up to launch an ambitious scheme to biometrically identify and number each of its 1.2 billion inhabitants.

With her arms loaded with flowers and leaves, Mohini Indrawan negotiates the dusty village track leading up to her house in this northern Indian state, pausing now and then to exchange pleasantries with a passing acquaintance. Her spending a few hours away from home each day was once labelled 'immoral', but Indrawan is now hailed as a role model for other women.

Every year, more than a million Amazonian turtle eggs do not make it to the hatching period, nor do they serve as food for humans in the Tabuleiro de Embaubal, a series of beaches along the final stretch of Brazil's Xingú River.