Irked by accusations that it is the new coloniser of Africa, China is looking to use soft power and historical evidence of its ancient links to the continent to justify its economic embrace of Africa.

Robert Chan shuffles a pile of legal briefs in his temporary office — a wooden cargo vessel that he and a team of volunteer paralegals had apprehended during an operation against smugglers of logs and other forest products from the central Philippine province of Palawan to Malaysia.

South Asian rice farmers are switching to flood-tolerant strains of rice as insurance against inundations.

The 'gypsy market' in Brasov is bustling with activity on a Saturday morning. It's one of the few places left where pensioners and other low-income Romanians can buy decent clothes cheaply. And also here, the power dynamics between Roma and non-Roma is silently shifting.

The pukk...pukk ...pukk of a generator wired into the engine of a small truck punctures the silence of the desert. A man folds the bottom of his long yellow galabiya robe, tucking it into his blue jeans. He takes a plank of wood from the back of the truck and carries it over to a younger man who is sawing other planks.

The opposition is getting ready for a comeback in Sunday's parliamentary elections in Venezuela, although President Hugo Chávez's allies seem set to win a comfortable majority, perhaps as much as two-thirds of the seats.

The January earthquake that devastated Haiti put women and girls in the poorest country in the hemisphere at an increased risk of falling prey to people trafficking, activists and experts warn.

In Ntcheu, a rural district in central Malawi, villagers have taken the fight against the country's high maternal mortality rate into their own hands. They have almost eradicated maternal deaths in the area by urging pregnant women to give birth in hospitals, under medical supervision.

'I don't understand why we should celebrate [Independence]. There will be no freedom in Mexico until repression against indigenous peoples is eliminated,' says Sadhana, whose name means 'moon' in the indigenous Mazahua language.

A landmark political trial begins on Monday when leaders of an anti-government protest movement, known as the ‘red shirts’, will be hauled before the criminal court to face alleged terrorism charges.