News headlines in February 2009, page 7

The Russian economy is plunging into a crisis as oil prices fall and the government digs deep into its reserve fund.

Zimbabwe may soon become part of the South African rand monetary union when the troubled southern African country officially assumes the use of the rand as part of a raft of economic initiatives aimed at kick-starting its comatose economy.

Simmering resentment against major, concrete development in rural Goa - famous for its exotic beaches and idyllic rural countryside - has now exploded in violent agitations against corrupt local administrations.

The Barack Obama administration’s apparent resolve to take U.S. foreign policy in a new direction is creating ripples of hope for an enhanced U.N. agenda on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

'They burst in aiming machine guns at us. They found him in the hallway, they grabbed him by the hair, they threw him on the floor and they beat him up,' Ida Huenulef told IPS, describing the arrest of her son Miguel, the first indigenous Mapuche activist to be charged under the Anti-Terrorist Law by the government of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

A prominent international human rights organisation has called for an arms embargo against both Israel and Hamas after finding evidence that both sides used foreign-supplied arms to commit war crimes during the recent conflict in Gaza.

Monday's call by Sen. Richard Lugar for a major re-assessment of Washington's nearly half-century effort to isolate Cuba increases the likelihood that U.S. President Barack Obama will make substantial changes in policy toward Havana beyond those he promised during his election campaign, according to experts here.

Kenya's civil society has rebuffed efforts by its embattled government to restore its tattered image in the wake of waning public confidence in the state. Their major grievance is that the country's problems, including high level graft, are the result of a culture of impunity that has engulfed the nation's top officials and politicians.

The anti-drug, anti-insurgent Plan Colombia is, paradoxically, at the heart of the tragedy involving Awa indigenous people who were murdered this month by the FARC guerrillas.

While the Internet boom in China has given citizens new avenues for self-expression, the government's tight control and censorship of content has made it difficult for the web to act as a platform for any major political dissent.