News headlines in July 2009, page 30

Many civil society organisations are staying on in Sardinia island in support of a region severely affected by the economic crisis, after the G8 leaders summit was moved from there to the city of L'Aquila.

The suspicions of several Caribbean leaders about Venezuela’s growing political and economic clout in the region boiled over last week as they met for their four-day annual summit in Guyana.

Getting around isn’t easy for Jose Noronha. With minimal use of his legs, he has opted for a red wheelchair-bicycle hybrid that he pedals with his hands, a common sight in Dili, East Timor’s capital.

For decades, rubber plantations in the country's Mekong region have reaped huge profits for local businessmen. However, this industry, long regarded a blessing, is now increasingly becoming a source of social strife.

When China’s population control was imposed in 1980, it was meant to be a temporary measure which the government promised to phase out in three decades. It was intended to halt the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

A recent study by the Global Humanitarian Forum, headed by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, postulates that the economic and human costs of climate change could now amount to some 125 billion dollars per year and the loss of 300,000 lives, writes Maurice Strong, who was the Secretary General of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment.

The rise of the anti-gypsy Hungarian far right has revealed deep failures in the country's political system and its civil society.

The group of women cross this Uruguayan town every morning, some on bike and some on foot, on their way to CODEMUR, a women’s cooperative that resurrected a garment factory abandoned by its owners.

It’s another day marked by gunfire in the Morro da Providencia 'favela', one of the most dangerous slums in this Brazilian city, and the only area where people can move around in relative safety is in the lower part of the neighbourhood, towards the foot of the hill.

Africa needs a Green Revolution, but one that will increase agricultural productivity by using practices that build soil fertility while minimising harm to the environment.