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These women are not fashion models, nor are they advertising any product, yet their images look down on passers-by from giant black-and-white posters in the Venezuelan capital. There are 52 of them, and they are all mothers who have lost one or more children to the criminal violence that is plaguing the country.

A red flare lights up the moonless night at a remote military outpost in southern Kandahar, a signal to land for the incoming helicopter. Bordering Pakistan, this desolate strip of desert is deadly, especially during peak ‘fighting season’ every summer between NATO-ISAF military forces and the Taliban.

"He was a happy child, my younger brother," Mohammad Ramzan, 18, reminisced, his voice steeped in sadness.

There are some unlikely comparisons between the work lives of Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit seller who sparked the Arab revolution, and Francis Tachirev, a fruit seller in Zimbabwe.

Every weekend it has been the same ritual for so many months. Buying the newspaper, going through the classified and the employment sections inch by column inch, marking job offers that could offer a chance, even remotely.

The image of United Nations peacekeeping operations has become seriously tarnished in recent years, say some independent experts who monitor the U.N. missions around the world.

As a nationwide strike and protests against the lifting of the fuel subsidy paralysed Nigeria for the third day in a row, analysts say the billions of dollars a year lost to corruption in the oil industry could have been used to leave the subsidy in place.

Picking spots for cattle to graze could reverse desertification and even does its bit to retard climate change, new experiments in Zimbabwe have shown. It’s what is coming to be called the Brown Revolution.

Humanity is driving Earth's climate and ecosystems towards dangerous tipping points, requiring radical new forms of international cooperation and governance, experts say.

The decision by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to push ahead with a financial transactions tax (FTT) may be a political ploy ahead of elections, but it has the approval of many non-governmental organisations, even as support lags elsewhere.

The so-called "Arab Spring" led U.S. network television evening news coverage during 2011, comprising a total of about 10 percent of all the news coverage provided by the three major commercial networks during 2011, according to the latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

Weaning Afghanistan’s poppy farmers away from growing the raw material for the bulk of the world’s illicit heroin has never been easy, but Kashmir’s saffron cultivators may have the answer. A high-value crop, saffron has long been seen as a counternarcotics candidate, but the idea has a chance of coming to fruition with expertise from farmers in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state who produce the finest saffron anywhere.

The women of Makoko, a low-lying slum close to the Lagos Lagoon along Nigeria’s Atlantic coast, always sleep with one eye open. Many live in fear that when they go to sleep at night they will wake to flooded homes and business

"They would call you a Gaddafist if you drove one of those 4 X 4 cars," says Bashar, emerging from one of those traffic jams in Tripoli. "Today almost every rebel commander has one.

The United Nations climate talks in Durban saw a fortnight of tense negotiation between the developed world and the rest of the world, but for some researchers and peasants around the world the focus has been on connecting the dots between so- called "green climate solutions", industrialised agriculture and chronic hunger.

In polished versions of U.S. history, the near-extermination of Native Americans in the United States is an unsightly blemish that continues to be glossed over to this day. Yet the struggles of indigenous peoples are not exclusive to the United States and have grown increasingly complex in modern times.

Joyous reunions accompanied the latest batch of South Sudanese returning from Sudan to their newly independent homeland. But the returnees will face huge challenges integrating into South Sudan, which became the world’s newest nation on Jul. 9, but also one of the poorest.

Poor countries have depended on rich nations to supplement their sector budget without which millions of people would have continued to live in abject poverty. Have the years of funding made these countries any less dependent?

Women toil in the fields for most of their lives producing food and strengthening the largely agricultural economy of African countries, but when their fathers, husbands or older sons die, they are no longer welcome on land they may have tended for years.

Francis Mburu used to keep indigenous cattle in Entasopia village in the semi- arid Kajiado region, 160 kilometres southwest of Nairobi. However, increasing temperatures and frequent droughts in Kenya have made this difficult in recent years. But now, in an area that has never had electricity, where education is not a priority or sometimes not an option at all, residents of Entasopia are using a solar-powered internet facility to adapt to the changing climatic conditions.