“My income is just right to feed us three times a day,” Jason Bostero told Sam Eaton in the rural Philippine village of Humayhumay. “It’s really, really different when you have a small family.” Eaton traveled to the Philippines to report on the connections between food security and population for Homelands Productions, creating a short film and radio piece that ran on NewsHour and Marketplace as part the Food for Nine Billion series last year. [Video Below]

Stan Bernstein, a retired UNFPA senior policy adviser and former health adviser on the UN Millennium Project, recently attended the Seventh Annual Research Conference on Population, Reproductive Health, and Economic Development in Oslo, Norway. During the conference, Bernstein reflected on the presence of reproductive health and population issues among the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their indicators. He also commented on prospects for including relevant reproductive health and population goals or indicators in the development agenda beyond 2015. Bernstein hailed the role of research from the PopPov network in the past and its potential contributions to future development agendas. He answers some questions for PRB below.

One year ago, the United States government froze all property of the Central Bank of Iran and other Iranian financial institutions within the United States. The move was part of a broader effort to compel the Islamic Republic to give up its alleged nuclear weapons program. How is it working out?

Ten years ago, a study was conducted in Mozambique to determine the impact of a new medicine for pregnant women with malaria. Over 1,000 women participated in a controlled trial of intermittent preventative treatment with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine – half received a placebo, the other half received the actual drug. All were given an insecticide-treated net.

The original version of this op-ed, by Sam Loewenberg, appeared in The New York Times.

Americans love success stories. Go to the web sites of the United States Agency for International Development, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or a plethora of global health and development organizations, and you’ll find articles, charts, and videos documenting their triumphs and innovations, with the promise of more on the way.

December and January were busy months. The U.S. National Intelligence Council released their latest quadrennial Global Trends Report, we saw a progress report on USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative, and Typhoon Bopha showed why developing countries are so vulnerable to climate change. Laurie Mazur also responded to Blair A. Ruble’s Wilson Center policy brief on 21st century urbanization with a look at how sustainable cities really are, and we heard from Ethiopia’s PHE community about the challenges of project monitoring and evaluation. Some past-year favorites emerged again as well, with Yemen’s demography, a look at Mongolia’s mining boom, and a great map of the world’s exclusive economic zones.

ECSP Senior Advisor and Ohio University Professor Geoff Dabelko appeared on Marketplace yesterday to comment on Defense Secretary Nominee Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearings and whether the Pentagon’s pursuit of renewable energy and other “green” technologies might enter the discussion.