The World Health Organisation has hailed what it called the best results for years in the fight against malaria. The agency said malaria deaths in 11 of the worst-affected countries in Africa had halved over the past decade. But the WHO says only 35% of vulnerable children received the protection they need. From Geneva, Imogen Foulkes reports.
Last year, deaths from malaria fell, and the most significant decreases were in Africa, where 11 of the worst-affected countries have seen deaths fall by over 50% in the last decade. The WHO says this is proof that the massive scale-up in malaria control programmes is actually working. Five hundred and seventy-eight million people now benefit from insecticide-treated bed nets.
The Mexican President Felipe Calderon says plans by a notorious drug cartel for an extravagant party led to the killing of its leader. Nazario Moreno of the La Familia Michoacana cartel was killed in a gun battle with police last week. Mr Calderon says the police had learned of the cartel's plan to hold a party for hundreds of people, and the gunfight happened when officers arrived to investigate.
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A draft report prepared by the Council of Europe has accused the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, of heading an organised criminal group that's engaged in human rights abuses and trafficked weapons, drugs and human organs. The report by the council's human rights rapporteur Dick Marty says the crime ring, known as the Drenica group, includes many former commanders from the Kosovo Liberation Army and came to prominence in the late 1990s when the guerrilla group led an insurgency against Serbian control of Kosovo. Mr Thaci was the guerrillas' political leader at the time. The report says there's evidence that the group's involvement in criminal activities has continued to the present day. The Kosovan government has denounced its findings as "baseless and defamatory".