News headlines in 2009, page 43

Social organisations in Guatemala are celebrating the entry into effect of a family planning law that will usher sex education into the country's classrooms and facilitate access to birth control methods, as a victory in the fight against the country's high birth and maternal and infant mortality rates.

Born in a squatter camp in Orlando East and raised by a single mother; working in a factory while completing secondary school by correspondence; arrested and banned by the apartheid government: South Africa's ambassador to Italy is an example of the long road her country has travelled.

In more than 34 years as a judge, he has not been as deeply concerned by anything as he was by the recent comment of a South African deputy minister of police that police officers should shoot and 'kill the bastards'.

A group of workers in Honduras managed to prevent the closure of an assembly plant manufacturing sportswear for the U.S.-based sports apparel maker Russell Athletic, thereby saving 1,200 jobs.

'You don’t need to go far, it is all around us,' said Robert Dijksterhuis, head of the gender division in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to a room mostly full of women. 'Up to one in three women around the world has been abused in some way - most often by someone she knows,' he added, quoting UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) numbers.

One day after the State Department announced that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama will not sign the 10-year-old treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, it insisted that Washington's policy on the issue was still being reviewed.

'A bullet whizzed past us smashing the window to smithereens! My terrorised daughter slid under the nearest table. Everybody ran helter-skelter to save their lives. Just then three menacing-looking youths dressed in black exploded into the wedding hall, brandishing AK-47s. They started shooting indiscriminately, and soon our wedding venue was transformed into a battleground for dead bodies.'

The Peruvian government is once again being called on to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Voluntary Surgical Contraception (VSC) programme carried out by the Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) regime, under which at least 2,000 women were forcibly sterilised. This time, the demand comes from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Eighteen months after the powerful Cyclone Nargis tore through military-ruled Burma, one question that dogged early relief efforts has lost relevance: does the country have an active civil society to help victims?

As Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh winds down his state visit to the United States, Indian analysts say a major achievement has been ensuring that the civilian nuclear agreement between the two countries is on track.