News headlines in April 2009, page 25

Secretary of Defence Robert Gates unveiled the U.S.’s much-anticipated new military budget Monday, which aims to reorient the armed forces toward irregular and counterinsurgency warfare while proposing cuts in several major weapons programs.

'He’s the favourite. I always have to let him play,' complains a boy with a mentally disabled brother. 'Will she have to come live with me?' is a common worry among siblings of the disabled.

The Group of 20’s pledges of trade finance and aid for trade are too vague, according to the editors of the e-book ‘‘Rebuilding Global Trade’’, published last week. And the London summit of this group of developed and developing economies last week failed to make a strong commitment to the multilateral trade regime.

The timing of North Korea’s rocket launch on Sunday, designed as a show of strength, was as provocative as the launch itself. It occurred on the day U.S. President Barack Obama made a speech calling for an end to nuclear arms and committed himself to reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

'They're always shooting at us. Every day they shoot at us,' says Alaa Samour (19), pulling aside his shirt to show a scar on his shoulder. Samour said he was shot on Dec. 28 last year by Israeli soldiers positioned along the border fence near New Abassan village, east of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.

For more than a decade migrants and refugees have been landing up at a slum in Patras town in the hope of catching a boat to Italy.

A declaration which equates communism to Nazism and condemns communist ideology as 'directly responsible for crimes against humanity' has been debated in the European Parliament on the initiative of the Czech Presidency of the European Union.

The Romanian government is borrowing close to 20 billion euros from international financial institutions in order to stem the effects of the global financial crisis. But few in the country seem to know precisely how the money will be used and whether it will have a more positive than constricting effect.

The escalation since December of the conflict in Sri Lanka’s north between government forces and the Tamil Tigers is taking a heavy toll on children and civilians, many of whom are still trying to escape the combat zones.

Residents in East Timor’s capital used to suffer from daily power blackouts last year, sometimes occurring two or three times a day.