News headlines in February 2009, page 3

Red-faced and unusually tongue-tied Israeli officials were forced to try and explain to U.S. Senator John Kerry during his visit to Israel last week why truckloads of pasta waiting to enter the besieged Gaza strip were not considered humanitarian aid while rice was.

Representatives of rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas met in Cairo this week for talks aimed at national reconciliation and the formation of a unity government.

Faced with a crisis that sent shockwaves through the markets and continues to cause immense pain in the real economy, the European Commission charged eight bankers and economists with drafting a blueprint for how financial regulation should be approached in the future. It might seem odd, then, that all members of this panel, which presented the results of its discussions this week, have displayed an aversion to regulation in the past.

Alice Anywar lives in the Pagak resettlement camp in Gulu and at 39 is a multiple victim of the over 20 year-old Lords Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in northern Uganda. The rebels first attacked her home in Kilak village in 1987 killing both her parents and abducting her 12-year old brother. In 2002 they murdered her husband whom she had met in a refugee camp.

He's yet to be installed as Israel's prime minister, let alone starting to govern through the customary 100 days of grace, and already Benjamin Netanyahu is being allowed no respite: neither by those whom he envisages as his potential coalition partners nor by the international community, most pertinently the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.

In a nod towards greater engagement with people’s organisations, a summit of South-east Asian leaders in this resort town will slightly extend its customary face-to-face with civil society representatives.

A long list of top U.S. officials is urging renewed diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Russia.

Ana Celaya from El Salvador has been desperately searching for her son Rafael since he went missing in Mexico in May 2002, as he was trying to make it to the United States.

Six months after human rights defender Julio Avella was put behind bars, a prosecutor reviewing the case threw out the charges against him, which were based on the testimony of former guerrillas and police and army reports, on the grounds that they were 'contradictory, incoherent, inconsistent and illogical.'

The appointment of Dennis Ross as a special advisor to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has found a cool reaction in Tehran and some U.S. policy circles.