News headlines in July 2009, page 9

What remains of Palestinian civil rights is rapidly being eroded by the dictorial Palestinian governments that respectively control the divided Palestinian territories.

The presidents of South America's main trade bloc, Mercosur, demanded at their summit in Paraguay Friday the unconditional, peaceful return of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

On Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama announced his intention to sign the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), in what will be the U.S.'s first signing of an international human rights treaty in over a decade.

The enthusiasm for Brazil today on the economic front and the lead role played by its government in the international arena are in stark contrast with the inertia dogging the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the regional integration project and trade bloc that has been one of its priorities since the 1980s.

Mariana Rangel is filled with nostalgia as she gazes at the abandoned installations of the Dos Estrellas mine, where she worked as a secretary for six years. 'Those were years of prosperity; this is all there is left,' she tells IPS, pointing to what used to be the local hospital.

Fifty years ago, a small group of Palestinian teachers and engineers living in Kuwait founded a secretive movement aimed at liberating those portions of previously British-ruled Palestine that became the State of Israel in 1948.

In what one U.N. official characterised as 'a historical development', the General Assembly spent much of this week debating the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which calls for the international community to intervene with diplomatic and, if necessary, military action, in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Duarnis Perez, a native of the Dominican Republic, became a U.S. citizen at 15 when his mother was naturalised. But he didn't know that meant he was also a citizen. He thought he was an illegal immigrant, and so did the authorities.

The U.S. Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury have doled out trillions in taxpayer dollars to banks and corporations and now the boom may be falling on what lawmakers say is a shroud of secrecy that surrounds their actions.

Thousands of displaced Colombians living in a protest camp in a park in central Bogotá are the target of an eviction plan by the local authorities, who admit they are overwhelmed by the influx of people fleeing violence in the countryside.