News headlines in August 2009, page 3

As the planned closing of the U.S. military's detention centre at Guantanamo Bay draws nearer, human rights activists are raising questions about the treatment of detainees who will be transferred to the U.S. for trial.

A very hot summer of workers' discontent has taken over Serbia. Some 33,000 people go on strike daily in 40 to 45 firms, according to union statistics. They are mostly employees of privatised companies who have not been paid salaries or social and health security benefits for months now.

The Barack Obama administration - perhaps the president himself - will reportedly be launching a new round of authoritative Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations sometime during the upcoming U.N. General Assembly session, which is scheduled to start in New York on Sep. 15.

The global financial crisis is threatening to shred the dreams of thousands of women from Burma, who have fled their military-ruled country over the past decade for better jobs in more prosperous Thailand, say activists.

Dozens of families this week started dismantling their homes and moving away from lakeside land in the centre of the capital after giving up on their lengthy struggle to remain. By the end of the eviction process at this site, around 30,000 people will have been moved off now-valuable land.

Research into an initiative to improve the lot of Ghanaian farmers shows how important it is that farmers organise themselves to improve their bargaining power with buyers.

Israel says 'united' Jerusalem will be the eternal capital of the Jewish state. However, a quick walk across the Green Line which marks the international border dividing the two parts of the city reveals a city very much divided.

After three years behind bars as a political prisoner in Indonesia, British human rights campaigner Carmel Budiardjo saw firsthand the viciousness of former President Suharto’s military dictatorship. Expelled from the country in 1971, Budiardjo knew there would be suffering when the Indonesian military invaded East Timor in 1975.

North America's largest natural gas corporation hopes a one-million-dollar bounty will take down the saboteur who is blowing up their pipelines in northern Canada.

Till last year, the rice fields near this village that sits in the midst of a rubber plantation had remained abandoned. It was neglect that is easily explained: a steady rise in the price of rubber had been more enticing to the villagers.