Ahead of the World Bank's Spring Meetings here this week, government ministers from almost 40 developing countries are meeting with UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, UK International Development Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell, Chair of the United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation HRH the Prince of Orange, and major donors and water and sanitation sector organizations, to discuss speeding up global access to water and sanitation.

Cameroon's military has been called in to Bouba Ndjida National Park to take on foreign poachers that have slaughtered hundreds of elephants for their ivory, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Reports vary, but between 200-480 elephants have been killed in recent weeks in the park by what is widely assumed to be poachers from Sudan.

"We saw this situation coming," Basile Yapo Monssan, WWF-Cameroon's Country Director, said. "We have consistently alerted the government on the alarming growing rate of poaching in Cameroon. This is their wake-up call."

Will launch series of measures that will cost European airlines and plane makers heavily

Faced with the European Union's decision to impose a carbon tax on all flights operating on its skies, India and 22 other countries, including Russia, China and the US, have decided to retaliate with a series of measures which would impose heavy costs on European airlines and plane manufacturers.

Poachers have killed more than 200 elephants in Cameroon in just six weeks, in a "massacre" fuelled by Asian demand for ivory.

A local government official said heavily armed poachers from Chad and Sudan had decimated the elephant population of Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon's far north in a dry season killing spree.

Poachers have killed more than 200 elephants in Cameroon in just six weeks, in a "massacre" fuelled by Asian demand for ivory.

A local government official said heavily armed poachers from Chad and Sudan had decimated the elephant population of Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon's far north in a dry season killing spree.

Wildlife activists said on Thursday that poachers had slaughtered at least 200 elephants in the past five weeks in Bouba Ndjida National Park. The International Fund for Animal Welfare called the scale of the killings unprecedented, and urged the government to take action. The group said that many orphaned elephant calves had been spotted in the park, and it feared they would soon die. The organization blamed poachers from Sudan; it says the elephants are killed for their ivory tusks, which are smuggled to Asia and Europe.

Conservationists working in Central Africa to save the world's rarest gorilla have good news: the Cross River gorilla has more suitable habitat than previously thought, including vital corridors that, if protected, can help the great apes move between sites in search of mates, according to the North Carolina Zoo, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and other groups.

A cholera epidemic sweeping through west and Central Africa, one of the biggest in the vast region's history, has infected more than 85,000 people, killing at least 2,466 so far this year, United Nations aid agencies said yesterday.

The virulent diarrhea disease is spreading quickly along waterways between and within countries, causing an "unacceptably high" rate of fatalities, the UN Children's Fund Unicef said.

Drug major Ranbaxy On Wednesday said it will spend nearly ¥200 million (over Rs 10 crore) along with parent company Daiichi Sankyo over the next five years to sponsor mobile healthcare field clinics in India, Cameroon and Tanzania.

The services will be provided in the fields of basic healthcare, immunisation, maternal and child health services and health education over a five-year period, involving a total monetary contribution of nearly ¥200 million, the company said in a statement.