News headlines in 2009, page 15

'Climate change is an opportunity to deal with all the issues of equity and justice that we have been struggling for all along,' said Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International in an interview with IPS on Thursday in Copenhagen.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says Africa must compromise and be flexible towards other countries, if the U.N. Climate Conference ending on Dec. 18, is to reach an agreement.

All day Rosalinda Duany sells vegetables from her stall at the local market, earning a living to feed her family while her husband spends his days idling with his friends.

Peasants fleeing Colombia's armed conflict are still trickling into Venezuela, joining the multitude who in the last seven years have requested refugee status and an identity document to help them rebuild their lives in their new country.

Landmark legislation on same-sex registered partnerships in Catholic Austria is an example that politicians in Eastern Europe's Catholic countries should now follow, gay rights groups in the region say.

Seventy-one-year old Kham, a woman from Napho Klang, left home early in the morning of Dec. 14 to join a ritual to revitalise the Mekong River, which passes through this part of north-eastern Thailand.

Climate change has given vegetarians a big, new stick to bash meat-eating with, albeit one they would have gladly done without.

China appears to have gained instant celebrity status since the opening days of the United Nations Climate Change Conference here.

Serbs can look forward to better prospects in the New Year, having scored two major diplomatic victories in recent weeks that may help integrate their country with Europe.

The Burmese military spares nothing with its iron grip on power — not even art.