Across Bangladesh, poor rural women are building up their country's fragile democracy by methodically and discreetly eliminating the small inequities of their daily lives. From: Ms. Magazine

FALLUJAH, May 12 (IPS) - Sharp increases in food prices have generated a new wave of anti-occupation and anti-U.S. sentiment in Fallujah.

A tragedy on an "unimaginable scale” will occur in Myanmar unless there is a massive and fast infusion of aid, experts and supplies into areas hardest-hit by the cyclone, said a spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee. + Up to 1.5 million in danger + Supplies running low + Forty per cent of dead or missing are children

AN XIAN, China (AP) -- China began airlifting aid to the areas worst hit by a massive earthquake Wednesday, while state media reported several thousand deaths near the epicenter that accounted for 80 percent of one town's population. The new figures appeared certain to push the death toll well beyond the reported 12,000....

China is seeking more and more of its agricultural staples from South America.

The Panamanian flagged ship Probo Koala unloaded more than 550 tonnes of toxic waste at Abidjan port in Cote d'Ivoire a month back. Emissions from that toxic waste have killed seven people and poisoned thousands.

What had been a story of steady advances for Hispanics has given way to growing joblessness and lost homes.

The global food crisis is unraveling economic advances made in recent years by large sections of the poor working classes of Latin America, reports a U.S.-based ethnic media organization.

What are the chances that a day of reckoning is coming, when the dollar would be so weak that America would have to play by the rules that apply to every other country?

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street rallied Monday as oil prices, supported by a stronger dollar, fell back and alleviated some of investors' concerns about accelerating inflation. The Dow Jones industrials gained 130 points....

The rural water project initiative, which resulted from the long-term bilateral co-operation between the governments of the Gambia and Japan, has been taking pace in the rural areas, especially in areas around of the Lower River Region, most notably, in the Districts of Kiang.

Forty years after he helped rescue the world from growing famine, and with a deepening gloom over the future of food supplies, Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is once again agitating for an agricultural revolution - this time a perpetual one.

WASHINGTON, May 8 (OneWorld) - More than 800 development and human rights activists are gathering here this week, developing and calling on Congress to implement new strategies to tackle world poverty and hunger.

Innovative local initiatives are strengthening rural regions throughout Mexico, which have been losing both people and their competitive edge in agriculture since Mexico opened its markets to free trade.

At least 44 people have been killed and more than 140 wounded in four days of clashes between pro- and anti-government supporters in Lebanon, according to the war-torn country's Internal Security Forces.

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Lebanon hung between fears of all-out war and hopes of political compromise Sunday as government supporters and opponents battled with rockets and machine guns in the mountains overlooking the capital....

In Oregon on Friday, Barack Obama delivered a short speech on the economy. His remarks were notable not because he debuted any fresh proposals (he didn't) but for the explicit pains the Senator from Illinois took to distinguish his economic platform from John McCain's -- as opposed to that other candidate still running for President, whose name escapes my memory, possibly because Obama did not mention it a single time during his speech.

A taste:

John McCain wants to continue George Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; I want to give a tax cut to working people. I admired Senator McCain when he said he could not "in good conscience" support the Bush tax cuts. But now, as the Republican nominee, he's fully embraced them. He wants to give a permanent tax cut to the wealthiest Americans who don't need them and didn't ask for them while working people are struggling. And for all his talk about fiscal responsibility, he's proposed $400 billion in tax cuts without any word about how he'll pay for him. That's exactly the kind of attitude that has shifted the burden on to the middle class, and mortgaged our children's future on a mountain of debt.

Obama also slagged McCain's gas tax holiday proposal, health care position, and support of the war in Iraq -- noting he would use the money saved from ending the war to invest "in our roads and bridges and ports. And I want to invest in millions of green jobs, so that we finally develop renewable energy, end our addiction to oil, bring those gas prices down, and save our planet in the bargain."

Good luck on getting those gas prices, down, Senator, because, if we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times -- if we want to save the planet, we need higher gas prices, not lower.

Whatever. Again, there wasn't much new to see here, except that, when he concluded with the observation, "there will be real differences on the ballot in November," you could almost feel a fresh breeze wafting through the campaign. After a long winter and spring of mostly imaginary differences blown up into all-consuming conflagrations, the battle-decks appear to finally be clearing, in preparation for a struggle in which it really won't be that hard to choose sides, however bitter you might be about who is emerging as the most likely person to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America.

Kenya's power-sharing cabinet meets for the first time for former rivals to learn how to work as a team.

THE GOSPEL of sustainable use of Namibia's natural resources is increasingly being preached in many parts of the country.

Burma wants aid but is "not ready" for foreign experts, its foreign ministry says, as fears grow for cyclone survivors.