News headlines in July 2009, page 7

Four years after Hurricane Katrina, there have been some significant improvements to the levees of New Orleans. However, even with improvements scheduled to be completed in 2011, advocates say the U.S. government has left the standard of protection at dangerously low levels.

Despite its conviction that climate change represents a serious threat to national and global security, the administration of President Barack Obama has proposed spending one dollar on addressing the challenge for every nine dollars it intends to spend on the U.S. military, according to a new report by the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

Patients in Stockholm can now be rushed to hospital in an ambulance that runs on processed sewage.

Cairo's airport has been unusually busy the past month as Egypt's security apparatus steps up its campaign against online political activists.

The head of the Afghan Supreme Court, Mohammad Zaman Sangri, denies that a legal double standard exists in Afghanistan, saying that all Afghans receive equal treatment before the law.

Being powerful in Afghanistan does not only mean that you can break the laws of government. It also means that you can abuse your fellow citizens in the most awful ways and never be punished.

Three weeks ago, Afghan President Hamid Karzai pardoned five international narcotics traffickers after the Supreme Court found the men guilty and handed down a sentence of 12 to 15 years in prison.

Palestinian refugee Youssef Shaaban was released from prison early this month - after serving 16 years in a Lebanese prison for a crime he did not commit.

Tan Pho Yi, 65, has lived with his family in their corrugated iron home here in the Cambodian capital since 1992. Those 17 years came to an end in just 20 minutes when his family were evicted and their home torn down by City Hall’s workers on Jul. 17.

'What happened to me shattered my dreams, my hopes – I wanted to be someone who worked outside the home but I spend all day at home looking after the baby. I can’t even sleep and I feel very unsafe, many of my days are a nightmare, it’s very hard to carry on and I feel very sad and very tired,' said 'M', who was raped at age 17 by a relative.