7 March 2013 Last updated at 07:12 GMT
Meeting to address aid and accountancy instead focuses on reshaping Yemeni constitution despite severe malnutrition and widespread debt
China's power plants and factories are spewing out toxic emissions and covering the country with smog and grime. For the new leadership, protecting the neglected environment has become a question of preserving its power.
In Guiyu, on the South China Sea, the smell of growth is a caustic, slightly nut-like odor emitted when a computer keyboard is placed on a hotplate. Electronic waste is processed in Guiyu, one of the most prosperous cities in Guangdong Province.
Body of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez lies in state
The body of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is lying in state at the military academy in Caracas.
His family and close advisers, as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, paid their respects next to his open coffin on Wednesday.
Mr Chavez died aged 58 after suffering from cancer for nearly two years.
Hundreds of thousands of people earlier took to the streets of the capital to pay tribute as a hearse carrying his coffin took hours to reach the academy.
The state funeral for Mr Chavez is due to take place on Friday.
The head of the presidential guard was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying that he had been with Mr Chavez when he died.
General Jose Ornella said Mr Chavez had died of a massive heart attack, and in his final moments had said he wanted to carry on living.
Yemen's humanitarian crisis masked by faltering steps towards democracy
Meeting to address aid and accountancy instead focuses on reshaping Yemeni constitution despite severe malnutrition and widespread debt
To talk of Yemen's humanitarian crisis is to talk of politics. If any reminder were needed of that, it was delivered with sobering clarity at a gathering of Yemeni civil society representatives, NGOs and government ministers at London's Chatham House on Wednesday.
Billed as a curtain-raiser for the Friends of Yemen meeting in London on Thursday, where ministers will debate the Arab state's faltering progress towards democracy and the need to make good on unfulfilled aid pledges, the meeting was meant to address aid and accountability.
WOMEN
Women climate scientists conquer Antarctica
Marine ecologist and climate expert Corina Brussaard is breaking ice in Antarctica. She is part of a new generation of women climate researchers entering a field once considered a male stronghold in scientific circles.
The Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research is located on the island Texel. During the half-hour ferry ride from the Dutch mainland, the wind blows icy cold and seagulls fly overhead. As the ferry approaches the shore, the institute comes into sight.
Corina Brussaard, a senior scientist in marine viral ecology at the research center, points to the Pelagia, a sleek, large ship docked in the harbor.
The Coal Monster: Pollution Forces Chinese Leaders to Act
China's power plants and factories are spewing out toxic emissions and covering the country with smog and grime. For the new leadership, protecting the neglected environment has become a question of preserving its power.
What does growth smell like? What does the biggest economic miracle of all time taste like?
In Xintang, on the Pearl River Delta, it is the bitterly acidic gases that are released when tons of denim material are bleached, dyed and washed. Xintang is the jeans capital of the world, a source of jobs for tens of thousands of people.
Kenya in limbo as commission admits to failing vote system
Kenya's election commission has taken responsibility for the failure of a vote-counting system that has left the country at an electoral standstill.
The election commission on Wednesday said that the final results of Monday's presidential election should be released on Friday. Officials began transporting the tally sheets from voting locations to the capital to begin a count of the vote, the country's first since its 2007 election led to massive violence that killed more than 1 000 people.
Deputy Prime Minster Uhuru Kenyatta and Prime Minister Raila Odinga are the top two contenders.
People in Kenya grew increasingly frustrated that the announcements of public vote tallies stopped close to 48 hours after polls closed. The breakdown of the electronic vote system has meant that less than half of preliminary results were released. Officials – who have been working to ensure violence doesn't break out this election – are calling for patience.
Why North Korea is turning up the heat again
North Korea's military is vowing to cancel the 1953 cease-fire that effectively ended the Korean War, straining frayed ties in the region as the UN moves to impose new sanctions.
It’s been a dramatic week on the Korean Peninsula, culminating with a threat from North Korea to break the 60-year truce with the South and the subsequent terse warning from South Korea's military Wednesday that it would respond to any attack from North Korea with “strong and stern measures.”
In case you missed it, this comes on the heels ofChina's agreement to sanction the North, and formerNBA star Dennis Rodman’s debrief on his basketball diplomacy trip to the world’s most isolated country – and, lest we forget it, rumors of an expansion of the Kim dynasty.
The North's bombast also comes ahead of planned military exercises during an especially tense period. The US and South Korea’s regular combined field-training exercises are set for early next week, and North Korea has been observed planning their own exercises, which could set the stage for a clash as happened in 2010. The deadly shelling of Yeonpyeong Island broke out after North Korea claimed that the South had fired into its waters during routine exercises.
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