News headlines in May 2009, page 3

Israel is set to approve a radical new bill which threatens to legalise discrimination against its sizeable Arab minority for the first time.

Colonisation can be blamed for Africa’s underdevelopment but today Africans must take their fate in their own hands and become ambitious. The continent badly needs industrialisation but it has fallen back into the trap of merely exporting commodities because of booming prices.

Suliman Khodari begins his shift at 5am on one of Gaza City's busiest streets. With his horse-drawn cart, Suliman spends seven hours every morning hauling away the rubbish left by residents and shop owners of the neighbourhood. But he is not a scavenger.

In May 2004 eight East European states joined the EU, with their politicians and citizens harbouring high hopes of what accession would bring.

Public pressure from Romanian citizens has forced one of the biggest European producers of wood products, Austrian Kronospan, to halt construction of new production lines and to improve environmental standards at its plants.

Zimbabwe will finally host the 13th Common Market for Eastern and Southern African (COMESA) summit in the resort town of Victoria Falls in June where the regional grouping is expected to launch its customs union.

As Sri Lanka prepares for a new chapter of development after ending nearly three decades of conflict, ecologists among other experts here are calling for a ‘green’ revolution against the usual foreign investment, private sector-driven type of progress.

In a move reflecting growing anger towards Burma, parliamentarians from across Southeast Asia want the military-ruled country suspended from a 10-member regional bloc for the unjust treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democracy leader.

The tall green shrubs on Yehia Abdullah's farm in the Haraz mountains produce the bitter-tasting leaves that feed the nation's number one addiction. More than seven million Yemenis chew qat, the mildly narcotic leaf of the Catha edulis tree. Expanding cultivation of qat to meet growing national demand is rapidly depleting Yemen's limited groundwater resources, experts warn.

Bruce Brown died of cancer at age 18. Some of Marilyn Kissinger’s other friends lived into their early and late twenties, dying in the late 1960s. Most had died by the late 1980s.