Thomson Reuters Foundation

One in five people worldwide report having paid a bribe for land, with rates even higher in sub-Saharan Africa where women say they are forced to trade sex for property rights, according to research by a top global anti-corruption watchdog. 

Humanitarian disaster is looming in the western Iraqi city of Fallujah, an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) stronghold under siege by security forces, where tens of thousands of people face food shortages, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on March 8. 

Several villages in the western Indian state of Gujarat have banned girls and single women from owning mobile phones, saying the devices distract them from their studies. 

More than a million children in the Central African Republic are in urgent need of humanitarian aid while almost half of those under five are malnourished, the United Nations said on Nov. 27. 

Some two million children have been affected by violence which first broke out in December 2012, and 1.2 million now need urgent aid, said the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF. 

There are currently 125 million child brides in Africa alone, amounting to around 25 percent of total child brides across the globe, according to the United Nations children's fund (UNICEF). It also stated that this number is projected to more than double by 2050 if current trends continue. 

Indonesia?s proposed ban on sending domestic workers to the Middle East will force women seeking an escape from poverty to migrate illegally, and put them at greater risk of human trafficking, a rights campaigner said on June 17. 

The cost of violence around the world reached a record $14.3 trillion in 2014, equivalent to the combined economies of Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom, a global security report said on June 17. 

The first aid teams to reach Vanuatu reported widespread devastation on March 15 as authorities declared a state of emergency after a "monster" cyclone tore through the vulnerable Pacific island nation.
   

The British ambassador in Bucharest, Paul Brummell on Wednesday has visited the AGERPRES National News Agency, an opportunity to talk to the journalists about their daily work and their projects for the future.

Photo credit: Alex MICSIK / AGERPRES FLOW

AGERPRES National News Agency and Thomson Reuters Foundation today, July 17, 2014, concluded the Social Media and Digital Journalism course, devoted to the journalists of the Association of the Balkan News Agencies - Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE) member agencies.