According to a U.N. report released Tuesday, millions of children worldwide are subjected to trafficking, abuse, violence and child labor, United Press International reports.

Articles on breastfeeding in the Philippines, and the effects of the rainy season on maternal mortality in Liberia.

“The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution Wednesday condemning sexual violence in war zones, with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presiding and appealing for global action to end the scourge,” the Associated Press reports.

‘Microland’ Can Help Fight Poverty, Especially Among Women In a Forbes column, Elisabeth Eaves, deputy editor at Forbes, examines the concept of “‘microland:’ securing rights to small plots of land for the world’s poorest.” The plots not only “provid[e] shelter and a place to work, land confers the ability to…

News Outlets Focus On Participants In AIDS Vaccine Study, Potential Impact Of AIDS Vaccine The Associated Press examines the role of the Thai participants in the recent clinical trial of an experimental HIV vaccine which showed modest potential for preventing infection. “Nearly 16,000 Thais ignored the false rumors that they…

Journal Of Infectious Diseases Explores Why Safe Water Alone Does Not Stop Diarrhea Among Infants Born To HIV-Positive Mothers A study appearing in the Journal of Infectious Diseases explores how well access to safe drinking water reduces rates of diarrhea experienced by 6-month-old infants born to HIV-infected mothers following weaning.…

A draft G20 communique revealed Friday that the group of countries “has called on the World Bank to work with donor agencies to create a multilateral trust fund to increase agricultural investment in poor countries,” Reuters reports. In July, the G8 launched a $20 billion agriculture initiative to help developing countries.

The G20 countries “could help both the poor and the global economy by fully financing lagging efforts to fight poverty and disease worldwide, and the best way to do this would be to impose a very small tax on the prosperous foreign exchange industry,” Philippe Douste-Blazy, a former French foreign minister who is a special adviser to the U.N. secretary general on innovative financing, writes in a New York Times opinion piece.

Drugmaker Merck & Co. announced Wednesday at the Clinton Global Initiative’s (CGI) annual meeting in New York that it will “donate more than $500 million of its Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine” with the goal of improving women’s health in developing countries, Bloomberg reports. The vaccine works by preventing strains of the human papillomavirus that cause 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. The Netherlands-based company Qiagen NV said it “will donate tests to screen patients to determine if they have certain strains” of the sexually transmitted virus, according to the news service (Pettypiece, 9/23).

“One in eight women in Sierra Leone risks dying of pregnancy and childbirth complications exacerbated by a combination of poverty, discrimination, inequality and government mismanagement,” according to an Amnesty International report, released Tuesday, Reuters AlertNet reports (Fominyen, 9/22).