IPS - A month ahead of the 2010 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) review summit at the United Nations, some women's groups are voicing concern that member states commitment to women's issues is insufficient and slowing progress towards gender parity worldwide.

IPS - In April, the United Nations World Food Programme estimated it would need 190 million dollars to respond to a food crisis threatening more than 7 million people in Niger. By July, the WFP had revised the amount needed upwards to $371 million: a month later, the U.N. agency has been forced to scale back aid for lack of funds.

NEW YORK TIMES - When Alexandra Pascalidou, a Swedish-Greek writer and television host, joked on a Greek cooking show that dad rather than mom might make dinner for the children, her producer, she recalled, yelled into her earpiece to “cut that feminist nonsense.”

TURKISH WEEKLY - The 2010 Annual Ministerial Review, held during the High-level Segment of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), unfolded in New York from 28 June to 2 July 2010 and went into high gear on Gender issues by focusing on the theme, "Implementing the internationally agreed goals and commitments in regard to gender equality and empowerment of women."

THE GUARDIAN - "Some time ago a friend who had lost his City job confessed he had considered killing himself. I was appalled but not surprised: while men are being hit harder by the recession than women they are also seem to be showing less resilience in dealing with unemployment and economic insecurity," wrote Julia Margo in an interesting opinion article.

THE INDEPENDENT - Minutes after the test revealed she was pregnant, Amy saw only one option – to leave Ireland and have an abortion in Britain. Her architect partner had lost his job in Ireland's property crash and she was worried about hers, so the 29-year-old office assistant felt she had no choice. "We found it hard enough to finance the abortion," said Amy, who declined to give her full name because of the sensitive subject. "So how could we support a child?"

WOMENS NEWS - Women who grow more than half the world's agricultural produce have gained international recognition and aid since the start of the global food crisis in 2007. Instead of being seen as a minor, vulnerable group, international aid agencies have begun keeping sex-specific data and reaching out to themas development partners, said Jeannette Gurung, director of Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and National Resource Management.

IPS - Inequality and poverty in Argentina are explained to a large extent by a job market that discriminates against women, coupled within sufficient equal opportunity regulations and failure to enforce existing labour laws, experts on the issue told IPS.

AFP - The 18th council of war on AIDS has opened up new fronts in a nearly three-decade-old campaign but in the grim awareness that abattle-hardened enemy - the money crunch - is back.

THIRD WORLD NETWORK - The global financial and economic crisis has had a negative impact on African economies, and the main challenge facing these countries now is how to position themselves for post-crisis recovery as well as ensure that policy responses to the crisis do not lead to medium- and long-term problems of debt sustainability.

THIRD WORLD NETWORK - While welcoming the so-called "new dynamism" in the Doha process, a number of delegations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) have however stressed the centrality and primacy of the multilateral process, in particular that of the negotiating groups in the Doha Round.

REUTERS - Nearly all women in the United States are involved in household finance decisions and one-fourth of them are in control, yet many lack confidence in their fiscal management abilities, a study found.

IPS - As a major high-level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals approaches at U.N. headquarters in September, anti- poverty and human rights activists are stepping up efforts to have their voices heard.

TWN - In an effort to respond to the global financial crisis, the G20 grouping of major economies empowered the role and strengthened the funding of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Loans to developing countries were, including low-income countries (LICs), were expanded by the tripling the Fund’s resource base from US$250 billion to US$750 billion.

DAILY NATION - Women in developing countries have been hit hardest by last year’s global financial crisis. Poor healthcare, lack of education and unemployment are just a few of the challenges the women have faced, according to a meeting of Commonwealth ministers on gender affairs held in Barbados recently.

AP - Immigration to rich countries dropped during the global economic crisis, reversing five years of annual increases as the demand for labor fell, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

INDEPTH NEWS - As the global economic crisis evolves, China and other East Asian developing countries will be profoundly affected as their old growth strategies will no longer be able to serve them as before. Changes in economic policies and strategies that rely less on exports to the West will thus be required in China -- and even more so in the other Asian countries.

NGO PULSE - The latest G20 summit was held on 2 April 2009 where 20 of the world’s strongest trade countries came together to discuss global matters of trade and finance. Despite the broad and essential character of these economic matters, women’s ability to contribute to the world economy barely featured in the discussions and decision-making at the summit. Only two out of the 20 leaders who attended were women.

THE GUARDIAN - "It may be a number of years before we see living standards rising at pre-crisis levels." What number of years, I wonder. There is huge international focus, at present, on the cutting of spending on public services in developed nations. However, that's only one symptom of a massive – and scary – shift in the shape and emphasis of the world economy", said Deborah Orr in her editorial.

IPS - One year after the creation of the Global Jobs Pact, members of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are considering the measure's impact - and what comes next.

BIA NEWS - Feminists from Greece and Poland warned that measures to fight the economic crisis threaten women's rights. "We are not going to go back home and fall back into our traditional roles", they argued. They called their sisters in Europe for solidarity.

THE GUARDIAN - It's a shame the world's largest economies are reluctant to adopt the practical policies that can restore growth and employment. The US and European Union together make up about half of the global economy, and recovery is quite uncertain in both of these big economies. The problem is a lack of commitment by the authorities in both areas to ensure a robust economic recovery from the world's deepest recession since the Great Depression.

THE SOFIA ECHO - Bulgaria’s sex industry was hit by the global financial crisis in 2009, leading to a reduction in fees for services, according to recently-released research by the Sofia-based Centre for the Study of Democracy. The advocacy group campaigning against human trafficking, estimates that about 10.000 women are sex-trafficked from Bulgaria every year.

INDEPTH NEWS - The biggest economic story of our times is unfolding itself. In the new economic world we live in, countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America are providing the dynamism for future growth.

IPS - The vast majority of businesses in Rwanda - like elsewhere in Africa - are informal. Government expects that a drive to register an estimated 900,000 informal enterprises will both strengthen these businesses and improve tax revenues.

IPS - The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) came into existence in the right place, the United Nations, but at a most unpropitious time, in September 2000, when ideas about the invincibility of market forces still held sway in the world.

THE NATION - Long lines of gloomy people in business suits at a jobs fair. Foreclosure signs on tidy suburban lawns. Adults moving into their parents' basement. In the news these days, the face of poverty is middle class, educated and often married: the hard-working, play-by-the-rules victims of the ongoing financial crisis. It's the man-bites-dog story that never ends.

XINHUA - Sustainable development, economic growth, and peace and security cannot be achieved without gender equality, UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said on Monday, citing evidence of the beneficial impact of women's empowerment.

IPS - Women provide up to 90 percent of the rural poor's food and produce up to 80 percent of food in most developing countries, and yet they are almost completely ignored when policy decisions are made about agriculture and biodiversity.

IPS - The global economic crisis highlighted the necessity of transforming global economic governance. But least developed countries (LDCs) have little voice in this process. It is time they are allowed a seat at the meetings of the Group of 20 industrialised and emerging economies.

PAMBAZUKA - South Africa has one of the highest rates in the world of unemployment for comparable middle-income countries. Around 4.2 million people out of a total labour force of 17 million were officially unemployed. But this figure does not include almost 2 million individuals who have simply lost hope of ever finding a job. For women, the situation is nothing but drastic.

INDEPTH NEWS ANALYSIS - Rich countries will continue to crushingly dominate the World Bank in spite of recent shifts in countries' voting power, which have been described as "historic changes to position the poverty fighting institution for the transformed world emerging from the global crisis". The developing countries represent over 80 per cent of the world's population. Through loan repayments, they are the main financial contributors to the Bank.

IPS - The leaders of the 60 European Union, Latin American and Caribbean nations meeting in the capital of Spain agreed Tuesday that unity between the two regions is essential to weathering the global economic crisis.

BBC - Germany is to ban so-called "naked short-selling" at its 10 most important financial institutions. Short-sellers usually borrow shares, sell them, then buy them back when the stock falls and return them to the lender keeping the difference in price.

SPIEGEL - Germany's cabinet has passed a draft law to provide for its portion of Europe's 750 billion euro package to prop up the ailing currency. But will the fund work? Experts are warning that the side effects may be difficult to stomach.

NEW YORK TIMES - Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said that "the agreement by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to provide up to $960 billion of support to the Continent’s weaker economies, as well as to financial markets, has appeared to calm investors worldwide, for the moment." The agreement "will make the current economic problems even worse."

SOUTHCENTRE - A recent “stocktaking exercise” at the World Trade Organisation ended in despondency with the prospect that the current stalemate in the Doha Round will continue indefinitely as the world waits for the United States to clarify its intentions. The World Trade Organisation’s Doha Round appears to be stuck in a strategic deadlock, with no end in sight, and little hope for completion in the forseeable future.

THE STAR - Aid experts alarmed by Canada’s new anti-abortion stand in foreign policy have received some raw political advice from a Conservative senator: “shut the f--- up” or it could get worse. “We’ve got five weeks or whatever left until G-8 starts. Shut the f--- up on this issue,” Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told a group of international-development advocates who gathered to sound the alarm about Canada’s hard-right stand against abortion in foreign aid.

UN RADIO - Lack of funding has forced the World Food Programme (WFP) to cut rations it is providing to needy people in Yemen in half starting this month. WFP says these half rations will be primarily given to the roughly 270,000 people displaced by the conflict in and around Sa'ada and participants in a few other specialized feeding progrmmes for children under five and pregnant and lactating mothers.

THIRD WORLD NETWORK - This presentation will focus on three aspects. First, the perspectives on the case for a financial transactions tax from a developing country point-of-view. Second, the views of G77 member countries in the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Third, the significance of other reports that will mention the FTT, besides the IMF draft report to the G20 of April 2010.

SOUTHCENTRE - The financial impact of the crisis on developing and emerging economies (DEEs) countries has generally been quite “benign”. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers there was a period of rapid exit of capital from them. However, with aggressive monetary easing in the US and sharp cuts in interest rates across the advanced economies generally, capital flows to DEEs soon recovered.

AP - The U.S. is destined to endure a new economic crisis that sticks taxpayers with the bill unless Congress tightens oversight of the financial industry, President Barack Obama said.

ALERTNET - Four months after world leaders who gathered in frigid Copenhagen failed to agree on a binding climate treaty, a peoples' summit on climate change and the rights of Mother Earth is underway in the sun-dappled hills of Cochabamba, Bolivia.

ALERTNET - A shortfall in funding from international donors is jeopardising "essential life-saving" humanitarian operations in Pakistan, where more than three million people have been impacted by fighting between the army and militants, a coalition of aid agencies has warned.

UN ESCAP - With rising numbers of women employed in the informal sector of the economy in all Asian countries, the United Nations is urging recognition of the importance of shifting away from economic and social models casting these women as faceless “workers” to a new model recognizing the value of the women’s work and their role as producers and contributors to the society as a whole.

WORLD BANK - The global financial crisis may well have caused as many as 50,000 new infant deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2009. World Bank says that baby girls are more likely to die when poor countries face economic shocks.

ALLIANCE SUD - The onset of the financial crisis has heralded the disintegration of the traditional structures of international politics and cooperation. The group of the twenty largest industrial and emerging countries (G20) has swallowed up the «World Economic Directorate» of the seven old industrialized countries plus Russia (G8), split up developing countries and relegated the UN to the role of onlooker.

IPS - Due to the global economic and financial crisis, growth on the African continent dropped to an average of 1.6 percent in 2009, compared to 4.5 percent in 2008. These figures were announced by Abdoulie Janneh, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), at a joint annual conference of the African Union and UNECA in Malawi’s capital of Lilongwe.

THE NEW YORK TIMES - One of the more intriguing — yet unanswerable — questions that has arisen in the wake of the financial crisis is whether all that alpha-male testosterone at the top of Wall Street firms helped to ratchet up the excessive risk-taking, inflating the housing and securitization bubbles, the bursting of which led to a credit freeze and the worst recession in generations.

REUTERS - Economic crisis and climate change concerns could affect the fight against the AIDS virus and lead to a "universal nightmare," the head of the United Nations' agency for HIV/AIDS said on Sunday. The global economic downturn has brought about greater inequality and could increase vulnerability and fuel the epidemic, said Michele Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS.