OXFORD, United Kingdom (AlertNet) – Water is increasingly becoming a scarce resource and shortages could drive conflict, hit food and energy production and threaten growth in renewable energy technology, experts warned at a water security conference on Monday.

And climate change – which appears to be bringing more extreme weather events such as droughts and floods – is likely to make the situation even more difficult, they said.

SHANGHAI — The 2 billion women in Asia are still paid less than men for similar work and are extremely underrepresented in top leadership positions, according to a report that estimates limits on female employment cost the region $89 billion a year in lost productivity.

The Asia Society survey on women’s status in health, education, economic activity and political leadership urges improvements to ensure the region benefits fully from its underused pool of human talent.

These days, Indian policymakers are debating how to create a vast new food entitlement program. There is talk of poor households struggling to cope with high food prices and malnourishment among their children.

What you don’t hear much about, however, is the most tragic and outrageous consequence of India’s failure to feed its people adequately: starvation deaths.

New York— The theme of this year’s World Malaria Day is “Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria,” and the organizers carefully selected this theme to remind us that we must sustain progress against malaria to save lives.

In recent years, we have seen success in many regions: In Africa, malaria deaths have been reduced by nearly a third, and on other continents cases have been reduced by half.