ABIDJAN, 2 September 2010 (IRIN) - Continued election delays and political turmoil have for years been used as excuses to justify poor governance and the lack of investment in public services, say civil society groups and public sector workers.

JAKARTA, 2 September 2010 (IRIN) - Though the Indonesian government banned female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) four years ago, experts say religious support for the practice is more fervent than ever, particularly in rural communities.

MINGORA, 2 September 2010 (IRIN) - A few kilometres outside Mingora, Swat Valley's principal city in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa Province, a group of village women discuss the various problems they have been facing in the wake of the recent devastating floods - including the lack of firewood, without which they cannot cook.

CAIRO, 2 September 2010 (IRIN) - Milad Nadim, 49, from Helwan city near the southern outskirts of greater Cairo, needs to be on the street by 6am daily to stand in a long queue for subsidized bread, or his children will go hungry. He says he often waits 3-4 hours to get the bread, but insists he has no option.

JOHANNESBURG, 2 September 2010 (IRIN) - A surplus production of maize, Malawi's staple food, will not prevent at least one million people from being food insecure, a forecast that has not pleased President Bingu wa Mutharika.

LAHORE, 1 September 2010 (IRIN) - For hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis forced by the floods to abandon their homes, food is a primary concern: some families have gone days without a meal.

BAGHDAD, 1 September 2010 (IRIN) - US President Barack Obama may have hailed the end of US combat operations in Iraq, but the seven-year war has left an indelible mark on many ordinary people who are still traumatized by the horrific things they experienced.

MANILA, 1 September 2010 (IRIN) - The Philippines is bracing for severe flooding over the next few months as a result of the La Niña weather effect, which is expected to whip up heavy storms. Some specialists are saying the country is not adequately prepared.

GOMA, 1 September 2010 (IRIN) - Conditions in Mugunga camp for displaced people on the outskirts of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma are tough, but tougher still are those endured by hundreds of people from the Bambuti Pygmy community living just outside the camp.

NAIROBI, 1 September 2010 (IRIN) - Three Russian pilots released on 30 August, two days after they were kidnapped in Darfur, were only the latest in a string of foreigners associated with humanitarian operations there to be abducted this year.

KADUNA, 31 August 2010 (IRIN) - The children of most Nigerian nomads fall through the education net – the focus is to teach them the family trade, and their wandering lifestyle means they seldom attend school – but as the nomadic way of life becomes increasingly unsustainable, educators and state authorities are finding innovative ways to remedy this.

SAMBURU, 31 August 2010 (IRIN) - In the remote and rural district of Samburu, northern Kenya, where paved roads are scarce and motorised transport hard to come by, reaching the mostly pastoralist and nomadic inhabitants with HIV/AIDS services requires an unusual approach.

ENTEBBE, 31 August 2010 (IRIN) - A study of HIV-positive people in fishing communities on the shores of Lake Victoria in central Uganda has found that more than a quarter have "recombinant" viruses that might threaten both treatment and prevention efforts.

KARACHI , 31 August 2010 (IRIN) - In the courtyard of a building that was going to be an undergraduate college outside the port city of Karachi, Pakistan, Allah Baksh boils a pot of tea over an open fire. He and 3,000 others found sanctuary there after their lives were uprooted from villages in a 1,000 km radius around the city by the spreading waters of the Indus River, rolling through the southern province of Sindh to the sea.

DAKAR, 31 August 2010 (IRIN) - The West African Sahel is facing one of the worst food and nutrition crises in recent years.

NAIROBI, 31 August 2010 (IRIN) - The LifelineAfrica ambulance service was launched in December 2008 by two men who realized the injured often died of blood loss before reaching hospital. Almost 18 months after IRIN first spoke to the founders, we asked Ismail Mohamed how he and his colleagues were coping as fighting enters its ninth day in Mogadishu. NationLink, a telecommunications company, funds the service.

KATHMANDU, 31 August 2010 (IRIN) - - Farmers may reap as little as half of their normal harvests this year due to late monsoon rains in Nepal, a country constantly battling malnutrition and food insecurity, the World Food Programme (WFP) warns.

MANILA, 31 August 2010 (IRIN) - The Philippines will likely fail in meeting its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 in conflict-affected Mindanao, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) warns.

MULLAITIVU, 31 August 2010 (IRIN) - Few studies of children in Sri Lanka have examined the daily stress they continue to face since the tsunami and civil war, focusing instead on the direct impact of both, according to two studies in the latest Child Development journal.

THATTA, 30 August 2010 (IRIN) - "The water is coming!" was the cry in the streets of Thatta, about 200km east of Karachi, as shutters came down on shops; wives, children and a few belongings were packed into vehicles and sent off to neighbouring Makli in the hills a few kilometres above the threatened city. Merchants closed their shops and did what they could to strengthen their doors against water and thieves.