NAIROBI, Kenya — Over 200 million additional people have been pushed into hunger in the past three years as a result of the food and financial crises. The U.N. estimates that some one billion people now go hungry. Empowering women small scale farmers through financial support and technology is key to sustainable agricultural development, and can work towards the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015, according to "Fertile Ground" a new report by ActionAid.

BOSTON — Six hundred years ago, several decades before the coming of the Europeans into Asian waters, China mounted seven ambitious maritime expeditions to South East Asia, through the Malacca Strait into the Indian Ocean — even to the east coast of Africa and the Persian Gulf. In what historians have called “spectacular displays of power,” these expeditions not only impressed, and in some cases intimidated China’s neighbors, they also opened up trade into regions where China’s reach had been slight or non-existent before.

WASHINGTON — Over 800 villagers lined up one day last month to celebrate the installation of a new public toilet in Janadesar, a tiny community in India’s Rajasthan desert. They had reason to celebrate the event, because a toilet is not taken for granted in rural Rajasthan, where only one in eight people has access to one. What is shocking is that this is not unusual. Worldwide, about 2.5 billion people — 40 percent of the global population — do not have access to basic sanitation. Most of those without access live in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.