Headline News

As many as 71 African migrants drown after their boat sinks in the Mediterranean Sea, their companions tell Maltese police.

Thousands of cheering Ethiopians line the streets of Addis Ababa to welcome home Olympic gold-medallists.

KAMPALA Wednesday, August 27, 2008 (IRIN) - Faith is a member of the Ariel Children's Club, a group for HIV-positive children supported by the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF). She talked to IRIN/PlusNews about the challenges of growing up with HIV.

KAMPALA Tuesday, August 26, 2008 (IRIN) - Bwenge Kana is a member of The Aids Support Organisation (TASO) in Mbale district, eastern Uganda. She has been taking antiretroviral (ARV) medication since 2005, when she enrolled in TASO's prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programme after she became pregnant with her second child. She told IRIN/PlusNews about her experience.

KAMPALA Tuesday, August 26, 2008 (IRIN) - The number of Ugandan children becoming infected with HIV during pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding remains high despite the government's ongoing rollout of services to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT).

JOHANNESBURG Friday, August 22, 2008 (IRIN) - The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has announced it will go ahead with plans to set up a regional grain reserve, while urging member states not to impose export restrictions on maize as the region grapples with high food prices.

ACCRA Friday, August 22, 2008 (IRIN) - Industrialised and developing countries will be under intense pressure to agree on greenhouse gas emission reduction targets during week-long negotiations over future greenhouse gas emission targets which kicked off in the Ghana capital Accra on 21 August.

JOHANNESBURG Thursday, August 21, 2008 (IRIN) - One symptom of climate change is more severe tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons, featuring in the headlines more often.

NAIROBI Tuesday, August 19, 2008 (IRIN) - Pastoralists in East Africa's arid and semi-arid lands need to be empowered to adapt to, and survive, climate change, a report by a humanitarian organisation says.

GULU Tuesday, August 19, 2008 (IRIN) - Food insecurity in northern Uganda, a region recovering from two decades of conflict, is approaching crisis levels due to a combination of factors, including bad weather and lack of adequate farm inputs, agricultural officials have cautioned.

GULU Monday, August 18, 2008 (IRIN) - The United Nations special envoy for Lord's Resistance Army-affected areas, Joachim Chissano, has said LRA leader Joseph Kony is finally willing to sign a deal to end more than 20 years of conflict in northern Uganda, but only after meeting personally with the mediator of peace talks.

KAMPALA Thursday, August 07, 2008 (IRIN) - Bad hygiene and lack of adequate sanitation facilities in northern Uganda, a region still recovering from two decades of conflict, have fuelled the spread of the Hepatitis E viral infection in several districts, a senior official said.

JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, August 05, 2008 (IRIN) - In developing countries, where survival is often a daily struggle, people cannot afford to wait for their government to bail them out. Many are living in the grip of climate change, coping with frequent droughts, heavy flooding, intense cyclones and other extreme weather events, and have found ways to adapt:

JOHANNESBURG Monday, August 04, 2008 (IRIN) - As countries grapple with high food prices, attempts to draw attention to an inefficient food aid delivery system have been pushed to the back burner after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks collapsed last week.

KAMPALA Friday, August 01, 2008 (IRIN) - A few years ago, Charles Kyagaba used to sell up to 300kg of fresh fish at the Gaba landing site near the Ugandan capital of Kampala each day, but now the situation is markedly different.

KAMPALA Friday, August 01, 2008 (IRIN) - In Uganda you have a higher risk of contracting HIV if you are married and over 30 than if you are single and in your twenties, according to the UNAIDS 2008 global epidemic report.

JOHANNESBURG Thursday, July 31, 2008 (IRIN) - The world can expect to become about 0.2°C warmer per decade for the next two decades, according to several scenarios prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols were kept constant at the levels they were in 2000, further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would still be expected.

KAMPALA Wednesday, July 30, 2008 (IRIN) - More than a million people are at risk of starvation in Uganda's semi-arid and remote northeastern regions and over 40,000 children are suffering acute to moderate malnutrition, a government official said.

JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, July 29, 2008 (IRIN) - Climate change is complicated, but it doesn't have to be:

JOHANNESBURG Monday, July 28, 2008 (IRIN) - The World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed a call by the World Bank for a UN resolution to scrap taxes and export controls on food aid purchases, but experts say there is little chance of such a resolution being effected.