News headlines in August 2009, page 6

Africa, the second-largest continent after Asia, has now become the world's largest nuclear-free zone comprising 53 countries with about a billion people. This means denuclearisation of one of the richest uranium producing regions.

India’s current dry spell, brought on by an errant annual monsoon, is rapidly turning into a full-fledged drought as a result of reckless exploitation of groundwater resources for farming, experts say.

Teenage Aymara girls only mature as women in the eyes of their community when they are able to demonstrate great industriousness and knowledge of traditional tasks. But by virtue of that same condition they are denied rights, justice and access to community leadership positions.

Western officials leaked stories to the Associated Press and Reuters last week aimed at pressuring the outgoing chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, to include a summary of intelligence alleging that Iran has been actively pursuing work on nuclear weapons in the IAEA report due out this week.

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision Monday to investigate whether interrogators from the Central Intelligence Agency or its contractors violated any federal laws in applying 'enhanced interrogation techniques' to detainees in U.S. custody overseas triggered immediate criticism from human rights advocates and appeared to widen the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats.

For decades now, privacy in personal electronic communications has existed only on paper. But the most serious aspect of the espionage scandal that broke this year in Colombia lies in the use given to the information that was gathered.

Will the world take the easy step to phase out 'super' greenhouse gases – hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) - using the existing Montreal Protocol ozone treaty? Doing so would be equivalent to preventing the release of 118 to 224 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050, according to a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency.

A case brought by election integrity advocates in Georgia claiming that unverifiable electronic voting, or E-voting, is unconstitutional could spell trouble for the controversial practice, as it heads to the Georgia Supreme Court for a ruling.

Five years after the tragic fire that destroyed the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket in the Paraguayan capital, leaving a death toll of 400 people, the courts at last confirmed the prison sentences of the four principal defendants, although compensation for survivors and victims' families has still not been decided.

The death of nine people following this month’s riot directed against a Christian colony in eastern Pakistan has cast a pall of gloom over a nation carved out from the Indian subcontinent in the name of religion.