News stories by Elizabeth Whitman, page 3

In a major breakthrough Tuesday, researchers announced that the vaccine candidate RTS,S reduces the risk of malaria by half in children ages five to 17 months, first results from a continuing phase three trial showed.

What was once a glaring weakness in the seven-month Syrian revolution and uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad is now slowly transforming into one of its strengths with the coalescence of opposition groups into the Syrian National Council (SNC) earlier this month.

History is strewn with proof of the destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons and power, yet science is also replete with evidence that nuclear power has many advantages.

Political, private sector and civil society leaders from around the world gathered here on Tuesday to recommit to a year-old initiative, Every Woman Every Child, which aims to prevent 16 million maternal and child deaths by 2015.

'There is a well-documented and shameful history of certain players in industry who... put public health at risk to protect their own profits,' U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told world leaders Monday as they met to address the issue of non-communicable diseases at the 66th U.N. General Assembly.

Bottom trawling, a method of deep-sea fishing, is threatening the existence of ecosystems in the deep oceans, wreaking nearly irrevocable havoc on thousands of species and the very habitat in which they live.

Next month, the world's population will reach seven billion people, a landmark that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is hailing in its drive to raise awareness about the need for global cooperation to solve issues of development.

Despite the frenzy of media attention bestowed upon Palestine's expected bid for statehood at the United Nations later this month, some doubt the impact it would have on the political complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or the humanitarian issues and human rights abuses that many Palestinians face regularly.

Karen Keyworth is frustrated by the racial profiling and ignorance frequently displayed towards Muslims and Arabs in the United States after 9/11.

Each day, one thousand women die in childbirth and one million people become infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including 7,000 cases of HIV. Yet these numbers are preventable, experts insist, when countries possess the resources and willpower to address and deal with them.