News headlines in 2009, page 52

The sun is setting slowly over Dar es Salaam's Tabata Changombe neighbourhood. Ameenah and Skukulu Juma lean against the corrugated iron walls of their makeshift charcoal shop.

The growth of cellphone use, particularly in the developing world, is providing health experts with a new channel of communication to provide family planning information.

Family planning: key to reducing child mortality and improving maternal health; a way to put less strain on the environment; and a smaller population makes the challenge of providing adequate education and health services that little bit easier.

Future firefighters have their work cut out for them. Perhaps nowhere does this hit home harder than in Australia, where in early 2009 a persistent drought, high winds, and record high temperatures set the stage for the worst wildfire in the country's history.

The international community, which has been hit by a financial meltdown and a global food crisis, claims it is doing its best to protect and safeguard the rights of children worldwide.

Stephen Mayfield, the recently appointed director of the University of California at San Diego's Algae Biotechnology lab, is taking on a Texas-sized challenge - giving birth to a nascent alternative energy industry.

The guns have gone silent — except for sporadic conflict in parts of the vast South Sudan region, such as the Eastern Equatoria State. It may not be the absolute end of the conflict in the region, but it is a reason for renewed hope.

Two national surveys and the latest report on perceptions of corruption by Transparency International support the view that a culture of graft continues to undermine the foundations of Nicaraguan society, in spite of efforts to fight the problem in the last few years.

Pictures of missing people have been hanging for years next to the gate to the fence surrounding Kosovo’s parliament. Some of them have been there for so long that the features of the faces can hardly be seen anymore - a good example of how slow and painful the process of discovering the fate of the missing is.

The idea of wilderness is 'an interesting concept; it is a Western concept. Our people have always lived and interacted in the environment,' said Illion Merculieff, an environmental activist from the Aleut community in the north-western U.S. state of Alaska.