News headlines in November 2011, page 7

Chinese essayist Zhou Zuoren once wrote that China should be experienced on a small wooden boat slowly gliding on its rivers, taking in its views. But arriving in Shanghai on the country's most advanced high-speed railway leaves little doubt that slow boats are no longer the way to romanticise China of today.

As Daniel Chakunkha and Mussa Abu talk on the side of a dirt path in Makunje village, Malawi, a steady stream of bicycles loaded with charcoal passes by. The men stand at the halfway mark between Mwanza, a small city in the country’s southwest, and Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial hub.

When firefighters arrived to put out a blaze that was engulfing the home of Elise Inversin on the French island of Corsica, the 66-year-old grandmother told firemen to forget about her house and save a neighbouring 900-year-old Mastic tree. The house could be rebuilt, she said.

It happens every day across the globe, with many of its young victims lured by false promises into the world's third most profitable criminal activity. This is human trafficking.

The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4), starting in this port city on Tuesday, will examine why international donor assistance worth trillions of dollars spent over decades has failed to eradicate poverty.

In the western desert state of Arizona, a company called EnviroMission is planning to build a new solar tower, the first of its kind, an ambitious new way to produce energy with heat from the sun.

'Enough is enough. Pakistan should respond aggressively to these unprovoked and unwarranted NATO air strikes,' says local shopkeeper Muhammad Omar. Public anger is boiling over as the Pakistani government takes tough action to cut supplies and other support to NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Gender responsive budgeting becomes important when seen in the background of unpaid but important care work done by women, say delegates to an international meet on aid effectiveness in this South Korean city.

As several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) elect bodies to write new constitutions, women are looking to expand their rights through legislation.

Since it launched in 1997, the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women (U.N. Trust Fund) has distributed more than 78 million dollars to 339 projects around the world, but even these resources fall far short, meeting less than five percent of demand.