“Remember, this is still Africa,” warned a friend of Tesfaye Negussie, an American journalist whose parents emigrated from Ethiopia. Last month, Tesfaye traveled to Ethiopia to visit family and friends and shares a story about the restrictions on press freedoms that excuse those in power and propel social injustices.

Worldfocus presents highlights from our weekly radio show, which covers underreported stories. From entrepreneurship in Ethiopia and Sri Lanka's bloody civil war to reverse brain drain in China and Baha'is in modern Iran, listen to the shows that were most popular with listeners in 2009.

Worldfocus.org builds out extended coverage pages to focus on key international countries and themes: Voices of Iran; Stateless to Statehood; Politics and Pop Culture; Behind the Korean; Crisis in Congo, and more.

Producer Gary Strieker reports from Ethiopia's Amhara region where 60 percent of children suffer from Trachoma, a bacterial eye infection that is the world's leading preventable cause of blindness. A new study finds that antibiotics administered for Trachoma is actually treating other ailments and reducing Ethiopia's high rates of child mortality.

Because Ethiopian farmers are fragmented and disorganized, they cannot leverage for higher coffee prices. Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal reports on why farmers are deciding to plant corn and khat, a leafy drug that is chewed with stimulating effects somewhere between caffeine and cocaine.