A new UN report says one billion people are currently living in slums. The report defines slums as poor areas that lack basic services or access to clean water and where housing is poorly built and overcrowded.

According to the report, the UN expects the number to rise to two billion in the next 30 years, if no action is taken to stop the terrible trend.

Key quote:

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said: “The locus of global poverty is moving to cities, a process now recognized as the urbanization of poverty. Without concerted action on the part of the municipal authorities, national governments, civil society actors and the international community, the number of slum dwellers is likely to increase in most developing countries.”

The United Nations Population Fund said in its annual State of the World's Population report that young people are increasingly responsible for the spread of HIV/AIDS around the world because of poverty and a severe lack of information and prevention services, according to The Associated Press.

The report indicated that In sub-Saharan Africa, which has the most cases of HIV/AIDS among youths, about 8.6 million have HIV/AIDS — two-thirds of them female. In South Asia, 1.1 millions youths are infected — 62 percent of them female. The U.N. report also said poverty, early marriage, unwanted pregnancy and homelessness were major issues facing the world's adolescents. Half are poor and a quarter live in extreme poverty on less than a dollar a day.

According to The California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based nonprofit (and nonpartisan) organization, Nearly two million California families were poor -- with family incomes below twice the federal poverty level -- in 2001 despite having at least one worker. In fact, the number of working poor families remained steady at approximately 1.8 in which unemployment rates reached their lowest levels in decades. The number of working poor reached a new high of 1.9 million in 2001, the
year that the national recession began and the number of unemployed began to increase in California.

The Sacramento Bee reported the poverty rate edged up in California from 12.6 percent of the population in 2001 to 12.8 percent in 2002.

So the question now is: What will Schwarzenegger do about the shadow of poverty over The Golden State?

There's still time to "prevent the twin spectres of starvation and destitution" from occurring in Zimbabwe, said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in a plea for more assistance from donors.

Zimbabwe's dramatic economic decline, coupled with the humanitarian crisis, has seen growing poverty stretching the survival strategies of Zimbabwean households.

Created by the UN General Assembly in 1985, World Habitat Day has been celebrated annually on the first Monday in October, this year being no exception.

This year's global observance is being held today in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, focusing on the theme of Water and Sanitation for Cities. This year's theme highlights the world's urban and sanitation crisis.