News headlines in 2008, page 12

Costa Rica is hoping for a big jump in its Clean Trips (Viajes Limpios) programme, which allows air passengers to offset the climate-changing gas emissions from their airplane flights by paying for activities that preserve the country's forests.

As many feared, little action has resulted from the latest attempt to move against tax havens.

Israel released over 200 Palestinians from Israeli jails in a 'goodwill gesture' Monday. This followed the Muslim feast of Eid Al-Adha and was an attempt to boost the waning popularity of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

With the Six Party Talks to denuclearise North Korea once again on the ropes and the world reeling from a deepening financial crisis, the United States is looking to China for help.

Dozens of cyclists promoting workers' rights are on an extraordinary odyssey across the country, scheduled to climax with the handing over of memorandums in Parliament on Thursday.

The U.N. Security Council is calling for intense international efforts to conclude diplomatic negotiations aimed at creating a peace treaty between Israel and Palestine.

Maria Harvey of St. Lucia was looking forward to a bonus this Christmas, but when her employers presented her with an envelope on Monday, it left her shattered.

In the first two pages of his book on the neoconservative movement, historian Stephen Sniegoski tells us that U.S. Mideast policy during the George W. Bush presidency has been 'colossally erroneous' and 'disastrous to U.S. interests', that the Iraq War is a 'blunder of colossal proportions', and that an attack on Iran is a 'highly likely' 'disaster' unless the country 'eschews all elements of the Middle East war policy'.

Pressure is mounting to include a National Land Policy that ensures equal access to land between women and men in Kenya's new constitution.

As Barack Obama's national security team assesses the challenge of Iran's role in the Middle East, it confronts a paradox: Iran is seen as having ambitions of regional hegemony, but it lacks the military power normally associated with such a role.