<p align="left"> <strong>GENEVA</strong> — The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and its Cosponsors, WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Bank, note with considerable interest today’s announcement by the US National Institutes of Health that two trials assessing the impact of male circumcision on HIV risk are being stopped on the recommendation of the NIH Data Safety and Monitoring Board (DSMB).</p>

<p> <strong>HAMMAMET, Tunisia</strong> — Midwives and public health experts from 20 countries around the world are gathering here today for the first-ever International Forum on “Midwifery in the Community.”</p>

<p align="left"> <strong>LONDON/GENEVA</strong> — The introduction of a new vaccine against Human Papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that causes cervical cancer, could have a major impact on the health of women in the developing world.</p>

<p align="left"> <strong>UNITED NATIONS, New York</strong> — The European Commission has contributed 15 million euros to UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, to help organize Afghanistan’s first full population census that will provide primary information on the number and characteristics of the country’s population.</p>

<p> <strong>UNITED NATIONS, New York</strong> — UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is requesting that international donors contribute $20 million for projects to address the urgent reproductive health needs of refugees, internally displaced persons and others affected by conflict or natural disaster.</p>

<p> <strong>BISSAU, Guinea Bissau</strong> — More than 80 youth representatives from 10 West African countries pledged Friday to improve the lives of their peers throughout the region by undertaking measures to improve sexual and reproductive health, encourage education, work towards poverty al</p>

<p align="left"> <strong>DAKAR, Senegal</strong> — Zimbabwean filmmaker Tawanda Gunda-Mupengo took home the $1,000 first prize in the continent’s largest Pan African Film Festival devoted to Gender Based Violence (GBV).</p>

<p align="left"> <strong>UNITED NATIONS, New York</strong>—Every day, women all over the world are abducted into forced marriage; subjected to harmful traditional practices; married, while still children, to far older men; and injured through gang rape and rape with foreign objects—usually during conflict.</p>

<p align="left"> <strong>BANGKOK</strong>—“Quality reproductive health care saves lives, and reduces poverty,” lawmakers from 103 countries agreed today, pledging to step up efforts to ensure that everyone has access to family planning, services for safe pregnancy and childbirth, and the means to prevent sexually transmitted diseases including HIV.</p>

<p align="left"> <strong>SUBANG, Malaysia</strong> — With an estimated 930,000 new HIV infections in Asia and the Pacific in 2005, UN agencies have called for urgent efforts to prevent the escalating spread of the virus and reduce mortality by better integrating HIV prevention, treatment and care into maternal and newborn health services.</p>

<p align="left"> <strong>ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia</strong> — Low rates of HIV infection must not lead to complacency, representatives of 10 Asian and Pacific “low prevalence” countries agreed today.</p>

<p align="left"> <strong>KATHMANDU, Nepal</strong> — The United Nations World Food Programme and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, have joined forces to provide essential food aid and reproductive health care to hundreds of drought-affected families in Mugu and Humla districts of Nepal.</p>