News stories by Charundi Panagoda

Fifteen million babies, or more than one in 10 infants, are born prematurely each year. Over one million die soon after birth, or survive to face a lifetime of health complications, says a new report by the World Health Organisation and co- sponsors.

Forty-seven years after the Equal Pay Act was signed into law, women in the United States are still struggling against wage discrimination in the workplace.

Since 2008, over 20 U.S. companies have imported illegally logged timber worth millions from the Peruvian Amazon, charged a multi-year investigative report released Tuesday by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

Days before the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, anti- poverty advocates staged their own egg hunt in Lafayette Park to urge President Obama to 'find political will to end global hunger' during the upcoming G8 Summit at Camp David.

On the eve of St. Patrick's Day, activists dressed up as leprechauns appeared in front of the Embassy of Ireland to protest Irish taxpayer money being used to pay debts of the Anglo-Irish Bank and the Irish Nationwide Building Society (Anglo/INBS).

A major U.S. civil rights group filed a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts Wednesday on behalf of a Ugandan gay rights organisation, the Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG), against a right-wing evangelist leader for inciting hatred against homosexuals that has led to increased violence against LGBT persons in the East African country.

The United States has fallen behind. Many other countries have already implemented it, but the United States still has yet to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which promotes women's rights as human rights.

If an organisation wants to monitor how its projects in the developing world are affecting women in specific areas of female empowerment, it probably can't, as it lacks the proper tools. But a new system, the 'Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index', is working to change that.

In 2005, there were 163 million more men in Asia, more than the entire female population of the United States. Asia is now facing serious consequences from sex selection, a situation the West might have inadvertently helped create.

The survival of Sumatra's tigers, elephants, orangutans, rhinos, as well as indigenous communities, is threatened by the 'world's fastest deforestation rate', caused by none other than the pulp and paper industry, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).