News headlines in March 2009, page 12

The first criminal prosecution for racial discrimination in Nicaragua, in response to a complaint brought by a woman lawmaker in the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), has focused attention on the segregationist treatment of indigenous and Afro-Caribbean women in the Caribbean coastal regions.

Amid signs of mounting tensions on the Korean peninsula over Pyongyang’s nuclear standoff, China has remained calm and seemingly reluctant to use strong words of criticism for its neighbour and long-time communist ally.

Bitter irony: in recent years Nairobi has experienced severe flooding and widespread water shortages, due to poor urban planning and collapsing infrastructure systems that are failing to support the Kenyan capital's expanding population.

Thousands of angry U.S. workers took to the streets Thursday to protest some major banks and insurance companies that have handed out extravagant bonuses on the taxpayers' dime, as the U.S. House of Representatives voted to get some of the bonus money back.

As the humanitarian situation in Darfur deteriorates, President Barack Obama's new Special Envoy for Sudan is likely to find his inbox filled with urgent challenges - none more immediate than how to get relief groups back into the province.

For now, the United Nations’ refugee agency has been given breathing room to operate in a western corner of military-ruled Burma, where humanitarian programmes offer some comfort to the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.

Chanting 'Anna Pata, Ana Yan' (Our Land, Our Mother), members of indigenous organisations and activists celebrated a Brazilian Supreme Court ruling Thursday that confirmed the borders of a huge indigenous reservation in the Amazon jungle and set an important precedent for future land disputes.

Sierra Leone's vice president, Samuel Sam-Sumana, on Mar. 13 ordered an indefinite ban on radio stations owned by the ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) and its main rival, the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP).

Olga is 39 and María is just 14, but both of them are looking for the same thing while they stay at a centre run by missionary sisters in the Paraguayan capital: a position as a live-in domestic.

Several civil society organisations are planning anti-corruption drives to combat the wheeling-dealing considered a major factor in the world water crisis.