A much-needed DNA laboratory is to be set up at the Forensic Science Department of the Khyber Medical College in Peshawar, capital of the violence- battered Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region in Pakistan.

On a Sunday evening, a track loaded with 10 tonnes of watermelons leaves Geoffrey Ndung’u’s homestead in Kanyonga village in semi-arid Eastern Kenya. It travels past a village shopping centre were people have formed a queue to receive food aid because of a prolonged drought in the area.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood came under fire from various political quarters for its decision to stay out of last week's clashes in and around Cairo's Tahrir Square. But as Egyptians vote in the country's first post-Mubarak parliamentary polls, many local analysts believe the controversial decision may have ended up paying political dividends.

Although at first glance male circumcision may not be the most obvious entrée to get people talking about gender equality, activists in the Western Cape in South Africa are attempting to do just that.

This year, for the first time, the World Bank dedicated its 2012 annual flagship World Development Report to women as indispensable players in the global economy and launched a media campaign to 'think equal'.

On day seven of 'the 16 days of activism to end violence against women' campaign, women's rights organisations around the world are asking what the biggest international financial institutions (IFIs) are really doing to protect women's rights, which are under daily assault.

The U.S. military and the Barack Obama administration have been thrown into confusion by the attack on two Pakistani military posts near the border with Afghanistan Saturday morning, even as the attacks provoked the Pakistani government and military leadership into much stronger opposition to U.S. policy in the region.

Hillary Clinton's historic trip this week to Burma — the first by a U.S. secretary of state since 1955 — will likely mix geo- strategic realpolitik with Washington's more idealistic interest in promoting economic and political reforms in a country that it has tried to ostracise for most of the past two decades.

At least 36 states across the U.S. are proposing laws that would require applicants for and recipients of a variety of public aid programs to undergo drug testing in which they would have to provide a urine sample. Several states, including Arizona, Florida, Indiana and Missouri, have already passed such laws.

In spite of the growing spread of HIV/AIDS among women in Latin America and the Caribbean, the female condom, which could put them in charge of their health, is not readily available.