News headlines in February 2009, page 6

In his first speech before a joint session of Congress, U.S. President Barack Obama gave a hopeful assessment of the country’s future and defended his economic recovery plan to get there.

The high profile trial of former Debswana Managing Director, Louis Goodwill Nchindo, could open a can of worms about the shady activities of senior government officials in Botswana, officially Africa's least corrupt country.

Ukraine's internal political problems and tensions with Russia threaten its path to stability and its candidacy for NATO and the EU, warns a new Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) report.

Sixty of the remaining detainees in Guantanamo Bay should be given new homes in the European Union, human rights campaigners have urged.

A leading human rights organisation charges that contrary to recent U.S. government reports that found prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba being treated humanely, they are in fact 'deteriorating at a rapid rate' due to 'harsh conditions that continue to this day, despite a few cosmetic changes to their routines.'

Africa's arduous path to development could be eased if governments took elementary measures to improve infrastructure, coordinate regional trade policies, capacitate customs personnel to speed up the regional exchange of goods and services and facilitate access of small and medium enterprises to financial resources.

Two Greenpeace activists who exposed a black market in whale meat run by the crew of Japanese whalers face up to 10 years in jail while the government shows no discomfiture over the nailing of its ‘scientific whaling’ claims.

As nationalistic passions burn over the fate of looted Chinese artworks auctioned in Paris this week, Beijing is attempting to keep the focus on past humiliations by Western powers and away from delicate issues like human rights and China’s handling of Tibet.

Israel's outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rode roughshod over those who piously argue that sport and politics ought not to play in the same arena.

Quickly after the idyllic scenes presented in the film, the story changes. The group of vigorous young men are home, greeted at the airport with flowers, hugs, kisses by loved ones and girlfriends. And then you find that the main character of the film 'Willkommen zu hause' ('Welcome Home') is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).