News headlines in 2009, page 11

The global recession has brought pain to many, but good news for at least one group - opponents of the death penalty in the United States.

Chicha, a traditional homemade brew produced all the way from Mexico to Chile since the days of the Inca, has largely been a rural drink over the centuries. But it is enjoying a new popularity in bars and restaurants in Bogotá and other Colombian cities, as a hip alternative to mass-produced beer.

Four years ago, the National Council of Educational Research and Training, a premier educational institution, laid down a new curriculum, radically changing the content of textbooks, particularly in social sciences, in Indian schools.

Music enlivens the yellow taxi as it traverses the Jordanian capital. A small Palestinian flag hangs from the rearview mirror. Jihad, the cab driver, says his father fled here from the Palestinian West Bank in 1948.

Kenya’s new Anti-Counterfeit Act will be challenged on Mar 8 next year in the country’s Constitutional Court on the basis that it violates the right to health. The petitioners, three people living with HIV, argue that the law confuses generic and fake medicine. This could cause a health crisis as generics constitute 90 percent of medicines used in Kenya.

When the global financial crisis hit South-east Asia last year, a reality that had once plagued this region — a spike in child labour — emerged as an obvious concern.

Cambodia's media organisations are a 'battleground' for old ways and new approaches when it comes to gender.

The world supped on an alphabet soup of acronyms over the nearly two weeks of climate change talks that just ended — UNFCCC, COP-15, IPCC, CDM, LDCF, MEF, CCS. But did any of these filter down to reach the average citizen?

'We’re second-class citizens, victims of a war that hasn’t broken out,' said José Duque from behind the wheel of a car carrying passengers from San Cristóbal, in southwestern Venezuela, to the border with the northeastern region of Colombia, near the city of Cúcuta.

Tomoko Ando and her husband divorced because she refused to quit her job as a lawyer and start a family. The shortage of daycare centres has created a dilemma for women like Ando who want to continue working, but also start a family.