News headlines in 2009, page 14

About one-third of the countries in the world have high or very high restrictions on religion, and nearly 70 percent of the world's population lives in countries with heavy restrictions on freedom of religion, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life.

People living in the Himalayan region are increasingly confronted by rising temperatures and glaciers melting at an unprecedented rate, threatening their very survival. This much the world already knows.

U.S. plans to substantially increase non-military aid to Pakistan to help curb Islamist extremism there will initially require a marked rise in the number of U.S.-based experts working in the country, according to a State Department 'Strategy Report' released to Congress earlier this week.

'It’s clear now — we’re not getting a binding deal at the end of tomorrow,' said the president of Friends of the Earth-United States, Erich Pica.

The election-related killings of more than 30 media workers in the Philippines made 2009 the deadliest year ever for journalists, according to a major press freedom advocacy group.

In the last two years, the conclusion among decision-makers has been that the only way to solve the climate crisis is to turn carbon into a commodity and privatise the atmosphere.

With only one day to go to the end of the climate change talks and no agreement in sight, it looks like it will ultimately be up to national legislators to effectively implement whatever agreement is forged here in the Danish capital.

Prisca Musonda is an ardent supporter of Patriotic Front leader Michael Sata and his party. She has travelled with him to most parliamentary constituencies campaigning in elections.

Almost 25 years after the fall of the dictatorship in Brazil, relatives of the victims and human rights activists are still battling to discover the fate of those who were murdered or 'disappeared,' gain access to official records and find out in detail what went on under the repressive regime.

Aminatou Haidar, the Western Sahara independence activist who has been on a hunger strike in a Spanish airport for 32 days demanding to be allowed to return to her homeland, was taken to the hospital just after midnight Wednesday, and is in intensive care.