Argentina has approved a gay marriage law, making the country the first in Latin America where same-sex couples can wed. Same sex couples will now be granted the same rights, responsibilities and protections that married couples have. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government supported the bill and defied the Catholic Church’s opposition to the law.

If you had 24 hours to capture your world on film, how would it look? The One Day on Earth project plans to have this question answered by tens of thousands of filmmakers worldwide. They are inviting global citizens everywhere to tell the story of their world during the 24-hour period of Oct. 10, 2010. Filmmakers will be able to share their videos and perspectives from 10/10/10 on

Friends of the Earth Europe has strongly criticised an agreement expected to be announced today by EU and Brazilian leaders to expand biofuels in Mozambique. The agreement to promote biofuels in Africa to power European cars is described as "immoral and perverse."

Zambia has sold more than 262 state-owned enterprises in the past 18 years, with the latest being the beleaguered telecommunications company Zamtel. As the debate continues about whether privatisation is the best policy option for the country, the government has learned from experience and addressed labour concerns more adequately in the most recent deal.

The Pixel Market incorporating The Pixel Pitch and The Pixel Meetings has now opened for applications. We are looking for international projects with stories that can span a combination of film, TV, online, mobile, interactive, publishing, live events and gaming. Applications must be made by the producer of the project and submitted through a production company. Enter now for your chance of winning the £6,000 ARTE Pixel Pitch Prize! Deadline for applications is Friday, 6 August 2010.

Rajiv Bhatia provides a historical overview of India's foreign policy towards the African continent. Reflecting on the successes and failures of this policy thus far, he lays out the political and economic motivations for a policy change and provides suggestions as to how government, business and civil society can work together to raise the relationship to a new level.

South African President Jacob Zuma hopes to take South Africa into the new international powerhouse of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) by building on its flourishing relationship with Brazil, writes Janet Szabo. In this article, she explores the different characteristics and assets the country possesses that make it a bona fide member of this group of emerging powerhouses.

Following the Pope's address to victims of sexual abuse in Ireland, it's time for a specific apology to Rwandans for the Catholic Church's role in the country's 1994 genocide, says Jean Baptiste Kayigamba. The church has actively protected clerics allegedly involved in the genocide, Kayigamba argues, but now is the time for it to break its silence and acknowledge the role of some of its followers in perpetrating one of the worst genocides of the previous century.

Ten leading aid agencies have called for a 'surge' in the humanitarian effort to help 10 million people at risk of acute hunger across the Sahel region of West and Central Africa. The centre of the crisis is Niger, where seven million people, almost half the population do not have enough food. A further two million people in Chad, and hundreds of thousands more in Mali, Mauritania, parts of Burkina Faso and the extreme north of Nigeria are also suffering as a result of the crisis.

New research identifying Haiti and Mozambique as the countries most vulnerable to economic losses from natural disasters also classifies a number of industrialised economies, including Italy, Japan, China, USA, Spain and France, as "high risk" environments for investors, insurers and business.

The global food crisis of 2008 may have been superseded by the global financial crisis of 2009, but the jump in basic commodity prices that it brought about bodes ill for the developing world. In a bid to stave off a worst-case scenario of empty shelves and ration queues, many nations which rely on food imports have switched to a new strategy for food security — buying or leasing farmland overseas.

Under one of the 60 or so agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement), WTO member countries are prohibited from providing government or state subsidies to exporters. When most of the WTO agreements were finalised back in 1994, however, the world's richest countries obtained an exception for their export credit agencies (ECAs) -- the organisations that use taxpayers' money to provide various financial services to private corporations from their home country to assist them in doing business abroad.

The July issue of IDRC's Lasting Impacts is entitled "Innovations in Research". among the topics discussed: Three decades of work by the Nairobi-based World Agroforestry Centre (WAC) has turned a traditional practice — growing trees and shrubs alongside crops — into a science-based discipline. That science, agroforestry, is now recognized around the world for its potential to provide food, fodder, increase crop yields and incomes, protect watersheds, provide energy, prevent land degradation, and more.

Gabon presents fertile ground for Chinese investment in extractive industries, though the development of this relationship is a lengthy process and is much diversified across Gabon and the economy’s main sectors of interest to China, writes Johanna Jansson. Jansson suggests the observer of yet another African economy to come within range of China’s investment radar should take note of the diversity also present within the ranks of Chinese corporate actors, whose level of responsible conduct presents no general trend.

Reform of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) is becoming more urgent as controversy over Zimbabwe's diamond sales pushes the international initiative designed to stem the flow of conflict diamonds towards paralysis. At the KPCS meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, on 21-24 June, Zimbabwe dominated proceedings, and delegates were given a rude reminder of the growing disillusionment when diamond business magnate Martin Rapaport embarked on a three-day hunger strike to protest against "corrupt governments [that] have turned the KP on its head; instead of eliminating human rights violations the KP is legitimizing them".

A major report that reveals how vulnerable the internet as we know it is, has just been published in French and Spanish by two global civil society organisations. The annual report, called Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch), was in November by the Association for Progressive Communications and Dutch-funder Hivos. GISWatch 2009 is entitled Access to online information and knowledge – advancing human rights and democracy.

Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa was detained for almost three hours at Germany’s Munich airport on Thursday, when he was on his way to attend the European Union-Zimbabwe talks in Brussels, Belgium. Chinamasa was part of a three-member ministerial delegation that flew to Brussels via Germany. The other two are head of delegation Energy Minister, Elton Mangoma and International Cooperation Minister, Priscilla Mishairabwi-Mushonga.

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma has reiterated that country's long-held view and called for international financial institutions to be overhauled to give developing economies a greater say. Addressing a session of the Group of 20 (G-20) in Toronto at the weekend, Mr Zuma said it was time for the group’s leaders to take the initiative with regard to the reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Saturday that his country would never be able to repay the 'historical debts' it owes Africa, and proposed a relations hip between Brazil and Africa that transcends trade and commerce. President Lula, who spoke as the first Brazil-ECOWAS summit got underway on the Island of Sal in Cape Verde, said conditions must be built to ensure the transfer of technology to Africa ''so that they can produce what we are producing''.

In this week's roundup of emerging powers news, inviting Africans to G8 meeting termed as " just window-dressing", Nigeria's First Bank eyes equity stake in Chinese Bank, the effect of a strong Yuan on Kenyan consumers, and ICBC loan for Gibe Project draws controversy.