News headlines in 2009, page 36

Negotiations to form a trade alliance between countries of Africa, Asia and South America stepped up to a political level when ministers discussed the issue this week, giving the initiative a further boost.

'When I saw the leaves on the trees curl and turn black and birds fall dead out of the sky, I knew that this was Death, come among us as foretold. My regret is that I survived,' said a native of Bhopal India after a gas leak at a pesticide plant killed 8,000-10,000 people in 1984.

With his slicked-back hair, neatly trimmed, close-cropped beard, and impeccably pressed suits, Luciano Coutinho looks like any other obscure Brazilian banker. But he is anything but an average banking man.

The red lionfish (Pterois volitans), a venomous coral reef fish from the Indian and western Pacific Oceans, has invaded the waters of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to wreak havoc on ecosystems, native fish populations and popular underwater diving areas.

Professor Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert with the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, was in Hanoi last week for a multilateral conference on the issue of the South China Sea.

Sachiko Yamada has been hoping to spend her retirement years traveling and living the good life. Today she devotes her time to taking care of her 90-year- old mother five days a week, leaving her with two days off while her mother goes to a care centre for the elderly.

Dominican organisations focused on the rights of women are bringing in assistance from all over Latin America to aid them in their fight against Article 30 in the recently approved constitution which states that the right to life is inviolable from conception until death.

The High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation kicked-off here Tuesday, with U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose Migiro calling for practical solutions and reinforced South-South and North-South partnerships to address the demands of our 'deeply interconnected world.'

Umbassil* is unlike other engaged women. Instead of planning her wedding she is wondering where she will have her baby. She is not pregnant but she knows that Bahrain's maternity hospitals will not admit her because she is HIV positive.

Nordic welfare state systems, often held up as model in the developed world, are crumbling under the assault of neo-liberal economic policies, say economic experts.