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- Palestinians ask for UN membership
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas handed a letter requesting full United Nations recognition for Palestine today in advance of his address to the General Assembly. Last-gasp efforts to breathe life into the stalled Middle East peace talks proved unsuccessful in persuading Palestinians to drop their bid. The Security Council is expected to take up the issue next week. The U.S. has made clear it intends to veto any measure offering Palestine the status of an independent member country. BBC (9/23), The New York Times (tiered subscription model) (9/23), Reuters (9/23), The Washington Post (9/22)      - Ban: UN members should fight intolerance
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged member states to condemn leaders who use the world body as a forum to undermine the issues of racism and intolerance with "inflammatory rhetoric, baseless assertions and hateful speech." Ban's remarks came at a high-level UN commemoration of the 2001 anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, which ended in acrimony. Reuters (9/22), The Washington Post/The Associated Press (9/22) - Not so fast, Haitian leader says of UN troop drawdown
Haiti is too unstable, and its police force too unprepared, for the United Nations to reduce its peacekeeping mission, known by the acronym MINUSTAH, from 12,000 to 9,000 troops in the coming year, President Michel Martelly said in an interview. "Many people are playing politics, trying to ask MINUSTAH to leave because they want to create instability. MINUSTAH can only leave when there is an alternative," he said. The New York Times (tiered subscription model) (9/22) - Africa gets malaria scorecard
The African Leaders Malaria Alliance has unveiled a quarterly scorecard that will help politicians, health care professionals and others track each country's efforts. The scorecard contain information on government policies, preventative measures and lives affected by, or lost to, the disease. IRINNews.org (9/22) - Inequality is undercutting global MDG gains
 The growing gap between rich and poor across the world is threatening to undermine the gains countries have made toward reaching millennium development goals by 2015, says Sir Richard Jolly, former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations. "Inequality matters not just for those at the bottom," he writes. "Highly unequal countries tend to grow more slowly, are more prone to conflict and have weaker civil societies." The Guardian (London)/Poverty Matters blog (9/22) - Bill Clinton wins support for new development programs
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton secured more than $6 billion in commitments to advance job creation, sustainable consumption and programs for women and girls at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. Training Tunisians on business administration and increasing broadband access for children in impoverished U.S. communities were among the 194 pledges made during the three-day meeting. AlertNet/Reuters (9/22) - Aid agencies urge re-think of Somali famine approach
An open letter from 20 aid agencies calls upon the international community to change how it configures and provides assistance to famine-stricken Somalia to include greater diplomatic engagement with forces -- both government and militant -- involved in the conflict that is hampering delivery of aid. Without greater reach to hundreds of thousands cut off by conflict, aid agencies say, deadly diseases are much more likely to surge, and compound the grim situation, with coming rains. The Guardian (London)/IRINnews.org (9/22) - Mozambique effort tackles range of problems
A joint initiative in Mozambique to replace thousands of charcoal-burning cookstoves with cleaner, ethanol-burning stoves is being promoted as a means to not only improve the health of women and their families, but to increase incomes of small farmers by up to five times, save thousands of acres of forest and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. CleanStar Mozambique -- launched by the company Novozymes and the development group, CleanStar Ventures -- also will purchase whatever food the participating families do not use. SustainableBusiness.com (9/22)  | - Girl Effect targets causes of poverty
 In an interview, Maria Eitel, president of the Nike Foundation, discusses the foundation's Girl Effect initiative, which focuses on lifting adolescent girls -- beginning at about 12-years-old -- out of poverty. "If you can get to a girl before she's HIV-positive, pregnant and married, you can change the trajectory of poverty and stop it before it starts," Eitel said. "She's uniquely able to break the intergenerational [poverty] cycle." PBS/NewsHour/The Rundown blog (9/22) - IEA issues warning on carbon capture
The global financial crisis has eroded political support for plans to capture and store carbon, and every year it gets harder to progress the effort, the International Energy Agency warns. Supporters of sequestration, placing greenhouse gases underground, had hoped the practice would account for a fifth of global emissions reductions. The Guardian (London) (9/22) - Saleh returns as Yemen conflict drags on
Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh made a surprise return to Sanaa today, three months after a rocket attack on the presidential palace forced him to seek medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. Efforts to find a political solution to end eight months of protests and violent response from authorities have stalled repeatedly, and observers worry the pro-reform movement has become little more than pawns for Yemen's powerful political factions. BBC (9/23), The New York Times (tiered subscription model) (9/22)
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