News headlines in 2009, page 47

Seated at a u-shaped table is an assembly of middle-aged men and women clad in business suits, faces stern and expressionless. Refreshments — bottled water, sodas and giant flasks of tea — clutter the long table, competing for space with piles of documents.

Women already make up 44 percent of the active members of the country's parties, but Peruvians want to see more women in political posts. Party structures and a lack of funding for women candidates, however, conspire to hinder and even obliterate women's participation in public decision-making bodies.

Numerous failures by industrialised countries’ governments and central banks in managing the financial crisis are feeding the next bubble, which most likely will again provoke economic woes such as recession, unemployment, and poverty, according to economists and analysts.

Activists from the U.S. and Colombia are targeting the World of Coca-Cola museum, located near its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, accusing the company of 'union busting', paying its workers 'poverty wages', and engaging in environmentally destructive practices.

A thick, chocolate-coloured scum floats on the normally clear blue waters of Lake Atitlán, in the southwestern Guatemalan province of Sololá, caused by agricultural fertilisers and untreated sewage from surrounding villages and farms.

Since before the creation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995, two groups of people have confronted each other: supporters of trade liberalisation, who regard the pursuit of growth as paramount, and opponents of trade liberalisation, who see unfettered trade as the cause of many socio-economic problems.

Elections are always a period of intense coverage by the Thai media. The sheer surfeit of stories on candidates of every political stripe and selected issues is guaranteed to raise media visibility a notch or two higher.

Defying Hindu orthodoxy and intolerant male priests, women in Maharashtra state, western India, have revived a Vedic tradition and become priests.

Amid worsening poverty, income inequality and a host of environmental hazards that are afflicting many countries, what does the world need today?

Taxation and government spending are the targets of a new report on Guatemala that argues the government is failing in its fiscal commitments to food, health and education.