News headlines in July 2009, page 29

The centre-right governing party and the leftwing opposition in Mexico were dealt a major blow in the midterm congressional and local elections on Sunday, in which the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) made a resounding comeback, reviving memories of the past.

The United States largely complied with a plan, negotiated with Iraq's government last November, to withdraw its troops from the centre of all Iraqi cities by Jun. 30.

The provisional government that took power in Honduras a week ago closed the airport to all traffic Monday after clashes between the military and supporters of ousted President Manuel Zelaya left at least two people dead and 11 injured Sunday.

There is a reason that eight and five do not add up to 13 when it comes to the G8. And it is not just that the five developing countries that now attend the summit of the eight mighty ones as a matter of course are less rich. It's because they have their own way to go, and parallel with the G8 meet, their own summit to attend.

Neglected diseases, neglected people. Marcel Tanner uses the phrase to emphasise the attitude of drug developers towards tropical diseases that primarily affect the marginalised poor.

Relations between Iraq’s various Kurdish, Arab and Turkoman ethnicities are going through a new round of complications since a provision in the draft constitution of the country’s northern Kurdistan region declared a range of disputed areas part of the historical Kurdish homeland, infuriating non-Kurds in the country.

Indigenous peoples risk losing control over their traditional knowledge if the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) insists on strict standards for managing access to information.

When the administration of President Barack Obama formally abandoned the longstanding U.S. 'war on terror' - perceived by some as a codeword for 'war against Islam' - there were hopes of a new relationship between the United States and the Muslim world after eight long years of political friction.

The Zimbabwean coalition government cannot afford to repay debts incurred when President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF was ruling on its own and will not repay those debts.

Brazil has long been committed to developing alternatives to fossil fuels to power its vehicle fleet, to the extent that 90 percent of new cars sold in the country are flex-fuel, running on ethanol or gasoline in any proportion. Now the government is embarking on another technological field: electric vehicles.