News headlines in February 2009, page 17

A commission led by three former Latin American heads of state has called the 30-year U.S. 'war on drugs' in Latin America a failure and urged a drastic change in policy.

As people around the world celebrate their loved ones on Valentine's Day weekend, activists are working to ensure that the ongoing horrors of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are not forgotten.

Who wins a tie? That was U.S. President Barack Obama's dilemma Wednesday on whom to congratulate as the winner of Israel's general election.

There are concerns that the behaviour of Fiji’s interim government indicates the possibility of a Burma-style dictatorship emerging in the Pacific nation.

A powerful symbolic reconciliation was staged in Harare on Feb. 11 when President Robert Mugabe administered an oath of office to make his bitter political rival Morgan Tsvangirai prime minister of a government of national unity.

It is busy at the gates of Bralima brewery in Lubumbashi, the capital of Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). About 60 men are waiting at the doors, hoping for them to open and someone to offer them work. Their numbers have grown since the global economic crisis which has caused the collapse of the local mining industry.

The release of Pakistani rogue nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, underlines major issues confronting Pakistan -and indeed the world - ranging from nuclear proliferation to governance, corruption, hypocrisy, and how public opinion is shaped by falsehoods.

With the new U.S. administration comfortably situated and setting political goals and policies, looming Iranian elections cast a long shadow over one of its thorniest issues: how to deal with the Islamic Republic.

There is less water now in the Tigris, and it is less clean. The river has fewer fish, and rising fuel and other costs mean they are more costly to catch. It's not, as Hamza Majit finds, a good time to be a fisher.

'The peace process is based on three false basic assumptions,' said Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Israel's extreme right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, which will dictate the formation and political course of the next Israeli government.