News headlines in March 2009, page 23

The goal is ambitious: Kenya’s first literary journal, Kwani?, wants to bring new thinking to the country - and ultimately the continent - and reshape African identities. The journal aims to provoke, create, entertain and develop a literary community that isn’t afraid to question the status quo.

When the Swazi government announced that it would no longer deduct loan repayments from the salaries of civil servants on behalf of microlenders, the sector was thrown into chaos.

The film La Teta Asustada/The Milk of Sorrow, the big winner at the Berlin Film Festival, drives home the brutal effects of Peru’s armed conflict on thousands of women who were raped and have lived with the pain and a lingering sense of shame and fear ever since.

Intensive unity talks are under way in Cairo as five Palestinian committees, representing 13 factions and independents, face each other across a table in a bid to form a new Palestinian unity government.

It's Ramadan, and Sara Elghobashy and a group of her women friends, having broken their fast, are looking for a mosque where they can hear the recitation of Koran.

China has sealed off Tibet with troops and demanded that the international community recognises the legitimacy of Beijing's historical claims over the Himalayan plateau, escalating a row over its policies there.

Sex scandals, political betrayals, threats and anger at the once revered monarchy - suddenly politics in Malaysia, after a sterling start last year which saw a strong opposition in parliament, is taking an ominous turn.

Amb. Chas Freeman withdrew from consideration for a top intelligence post in the Obama administration on Tuesday, following a vitriolic battle that pitted Republican lawmakers and pro-Israel hardliners opposed to his appointment against liberals and members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities who had come to his defence.

While U.S. relations with Latin America hover near their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, the election of President Barack Obama 'has opened the way for a new U.S. approach' to the region, according to the latest report released here Tuesday by the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a Washington-based hemispheric think tank.

Some of the first species impacted by increasingly acidic oceans have been identified just as scientists meet in Copenhagen this week to present new data showing that climate change is far more urgent and serious than current economic problems.