News headlines in December 2008, page 7

Outside a Home Depot store, it's a typical December morning in Seattle: cool and gray with a light sprinkle falling. At 7:30, about 50 men wait at the entrances to the parking lot. Most wear jackets, jeans and work shoes, and some carry day packs with tools, water and lunch. They stand silently with hands in pockets, alone or in knots of three or four, baseball caps or sweatshirt hoods deployed against the chilly mist.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has sent urgent letters to Palestinian leaders in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, urging them to commute the death sentences of 11 Palestinians currently awaiting execution.

A Human Rights Watch report on alleged setbacks in human rights in Venezuela since President Hugo Chávez first took office 10 years ago has been severely questioned by 118 academics from the United States and several other countries.

Cecilia Moran never thought that she would one day have to give up farming owing to poor health. She grew up helping her father tend a family-owned plot in Davao province. The sale of such produce as rice, corn, coconut and durian in the local market took care of family needs.

Washington and Baghdad signed a security agreement earlier this month allowing the U.S. to maintain a military presence in Iraq for another three years. But while Baghdad officials hailed the pact as the 'beginning of the end' of the U.S.-led occupation, Egyptian commentators -- like much of the Iraqi opposition -- say the agreement simply reflects U.S. strategic interests.

Double standards are being applied in the way that the European Union awards trade preferences to poor countries, an African exporters grouping has alleged.

Although 66 countries signed a statement at the United Nations on Dec. 19 affirming that human rights protections extend to sexual orientation and gender identity, activists note that dozens of nations still criminalise homosexuality and seven impose the death penalty.

Mercenaries hired by private military and security companies are playing an increasingly broad range of roles in Latin America, such as guarding mines, borders, prisons, and now humanitarian aid, said the members of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries at a meeting in this Swiss city.

The financial crisis has the U.S. swirling with charges about the immoral greed of some corporate executives who recklessly bet their companies' futures to line their own pockets. The popular fix for this international calamity stops at the nation's borders: decouple top-line salaries and bonuses from stock prices and institute more transparency and regulation.

Key appointments announced by President-elect Barack Obama suggest that science will soon make a major comeback in the U.S. government.