USAID will spend up to $2.9 billion of the agency’s resources to continue the fight for maternal and child health in 24 countries. (VOA)
Aid agencies in Iraq are straining to support the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the violence amid unclear government policies, lack of funding and a multiplicity of humanitarian actors flooding in to respond. (IRIN)
Latin America joined Argentina in the dispute over the so-called vulture funds, and called for unity to avoid the plundering of natural resources in the region. (Prensa Latina)
Africa
Mali called on the United Nations to speed up deploying the remainder of its promised 12,000-member peacekeeping force and station more troops in the West African nation’s turbulent north. (Reuters)
More than 50 people have been killed in two days of clashes in Central African Republic, witnesses and officials said, with foreign troops struggling to stop recurrent violence between Muslim and Christian communities. (Reuters)
The Government of the DR Congo and partners launched a measles monitoring campaign, in addition to an existing polio monitoring campaign, in the community of Kimbanseke. (UNICEF)
Sudan’s Minister of Information said his government did not re-arrest or detain Meriam Yahya Ibrahim, the Christian woman whose death sentence for apostasy was overturned by an appeals court Monday. (VOA)
Medical personnel in French-speaking Central African countries say obstetric fistula haunts 40 percent of women. (VOA)
Senegalese farmers say they have been squeezed out by an influx of private investors acquiring fertile arable land in the Senegal River Valley where he has worked as a farmer for the last two decades. (IRIN)
The Zimbabwe government has awarded a $1.3 billion thermal power generation project to China’s Sino Hydro after another Chinese company failed to conclude the contract, a minister said. (AP)
Residents of West Point, Liberia hope that one day they will be relocated from the beach as the continuous environmental degradation has resulted in most of the land eroding into the Atlantic Ocean. (IPS)
MENA
A bill aimed at encouraging more births by outlawing sterilization and vasectomies has passed a first reading in Iran’s parliament, media reported on Wednesday. (AP)
Asia
Burma says it will not turn away from reforms in the wake of a controversial raid on a Buddhist monastery and the arrest of five monks. (VOA)
The system for registering, protecting, and finding durable solutions for asylum seekers in Indonesia risks becoming overburdened – potentially sparking unrest – as migrant arrivals continue and Australia’s maritime immigration policy deters boat journeys, officials and activists say. (IRIN)
The Americas
Chile has made a commitment to the international community to improve human rights in the country and erase the lingering shadow of the dictatorship on civil liberties. (IPS)
Hundreds of British investors are looking to take legal action to recover lost money after being convinced to buy land in Brazil in the run-up to the World Cup. (BBC)
Mexico’s national commissioner against addictions, Fernando Cano, criticized the failure of the authorities to address the drug problem in Mexico, following the release of new data that substance abuse has doubled in the past decade, in Mexico. (Prensa Latina)
Opinion/Blogs
The president of the UN General Assembly gives an update of the intergovernmental process to replace the MDGs. (Global Dispatches Podcast)
Food fight: Coast Guard bill could limit aid to hungry (Al Jazeera America)
Higher Food Prices Can Help to End Hunger, Malnutrition and Food Waste (IPS)
Can aid donors help support LGBT rights in developing countries? (ODI)
Education aid gets children into school but it’s not the smartest solution (Guardian)
Did Boko Haram really abduct 91 more people? No one knows (Christian Science Monitor)
Should Africa Limit Presidential Terms? (OSIWA)
New Victorians must leave Gates and Bono in the savannah’s dust (Forbes)
Forgetting Nigeria’s girls (Vox)
Research/Reports
When the United Nations began negotiating a Code of Conduct for Transnational Corporations back in the 1970s, the proposal never got off the ground because of vigorous opposition both from the powerful business community and its Western allies. (IPS http://bit.ly/1pB9TiX)
A consortium of faith-based organisations made a declaration at a side event Wednesday at the 6th Asian Ministerial Conference On Disaster Risk Reduction, to let the United Nations know that they stand ready to commit themselves to building resilient communities across Asia in the aftermath of natural disasters. (IPS http://bit.ly/1pBauB5)
