Poverty rate among American women and children has reached new record high, said the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011, released on Friday by the State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China.

According to data from the United States Census Bureau, over 17 million women lived in poverty in 2010, including more than 7.5 million in extreme poverty and 4.7 million single mothers in poverty, said the report.

AHMEDABAD: International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, is helping Ahmedabad-based Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) provide energy-efficient cook stoves and solar lanters to its members. IFC will provide a partial credit guarantee for a $5 million loan that an Indian private sector bank is providing to SEWA-sponsored Grassroots Trading Network for Women.

Under the initiative, women from various villages in Gujarat will be provided a loan to buy the combination of stove and lantern, at Rs 2,800 and Rs 1,800 respectively.

Around the same time when Mohammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank were writing their Nobel story of rural empowerment, a woman in the humble districts of south Bengal started a micro-credit scheme similar to that of the Bangladeshi icon who was feted with the Peace prize in 2006. Madhuri Ghosh hadn’t heard of Yunus or his work when she formed the Bagnan I Mahila Bikash Co-operative Credit Society Ltd in 1997, but her feat is no less inspiring.

One in five adult Bangladeshi women dies due to cancer, says a recent study, insisting that much of the deaths can be prevented through early detection and screening. "Approximately 40 percent cancers are potentially preventable with screening and early detection," says a release of a development organization, a day after the World Cancer Day was observed in the country on February 4.

The Delhi government will convert the shelter homes, constructed last year to provide roof to the homeless in winter, into all-weather accommodation.
In the first phase, 30 homes out of 150 will be upgraded by next month so that the homeless can stay there throughout the year. Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) is implementing the project.

KOLKATA, 17 MAY: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee today announced an increase in government subsidy from 20 per cent to 30 per cent to the Self Help Groups for various poverty alleviation projects while inaugurating the National Rural Livelihood Mission or Aajeevika. The project, a joint initiative of the Centre and the state government, named by Miss Banerjee as ‘Anandadhara’, is aimed at achieving self-reliance and socio-economic development of the rural poor in the state. She was overwhelmed to see the Netaji Indoor stadium packed with women.

Better care has cut the number of women dying in pregnancy and childbirth by nearly half in the past two decades, but there is still a death every two minutes, according to UN figures released yesterday.

India and Nigeria between them accounted for one third of the 287,000 deaths of pregnant women in 2010 and Africa accounts for 36 of the 40 countries with the highest maternal deaths.

But health experts hailed the 47% fall in fatalities from 543,000 in 1990, and said the strategy for saving more lives was clear.