News headlines in March 2012, page 25

The outlook for people living with disabilities in the Democratic Republic of Congo remains bleak, despite a variety of efforts to improve their lot and bring them in from the margins of society.

The brightly painted old shipping container with solar panels on its roof and high-specification filtration devices inside looks out of place in this dusty Angolan village of Bom Jesus, 50 kilometres east of the capital Luanda.

This week was supposed to be all about Iran — at least, that's how Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had planned it - and why the U.S. should prepare to bomb it very, very soon if its leadership doesn't cave into Western demands to abandon its nuclear programme.

As the Syrian army has stepped up its attacks against opposition strongholds in Homs and elsewhere, the U.S. and its allies have achieved little consensus in choosing a course of action to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

As the race towards gender equality moves at an exceedingly slow pace, the United Nations is calling for a major international conference on women in 2015 - 20 years after a landmark meeting in Beijing in 1995.

When the Oscar-nominated film 'Saving Face' won an Academy Award in Hollywood for Best Documentary (Short Subject), it was the triumph of several 'firsts': the first time ever that a Pakistani filmmaker had won an Oscar; Pakistan's first Oscar winner was a woman; and it was the first time that an American and a Pakistani had co-directed an Oscar-winning film.

Money may not buy happiness — but it has helped make women in Brazil become the happiest, most optimistic women in the world, according to a study.

Tools such as 'gender markers', which screen budgets and resources dedicated to promoting gender equality, are proving critical to improving the effectiveness of monetary support that seeks to empower women and girls.

A United Nations envoy has called on the Iranian government to release all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and to conduct an extensive, impartial and independent investigation into the violence that followed the 2009 presidential election.

As the world commemorates International Women’s Day today, women around the globe are speaking out on various issues that affect them. In light of recent natural disasters and calamities in the Philippines, women are increasingly citing climate change as one of their most pressing concerns.