News headlines in January 2010, page 11

Their caricatures show great wealth and status, being driven in flashy four-wheel drives surrounded by bodyguards, and receiving benefits including mansions, cars, medical care and travel and sitting allowances. They are treated as Very Important Persons.

An international campaign to save the tiger, one of Asia’s iconic wild animals, is proving to be fertile ground for the World Bank to earn its stripes as an institution keen on joining the ranks of conservationists.

Dhan Bahadur Chaudhary, an ornithologist, grew up with vultures in his native Nawalparasi in western Nepal. He and his neighbours were used to seeing vultures flying overhead, feeding on the carcasses, and sunbathing near the rivers.

A week after the devastating Haiti earthquake, Israelis watched proudly as their TV channels showed the New York Fire Department rushing two young boys, extricated from the rubble of a building, to a field hospital set up by the Israeli army in Port-au-Prince.

Women’s empowerment may be a key policy of the Lao government, but this is far from obvious in this South-east Asian country’s newspapers and publications, many of which usually give more space to government pronouncements by male officials and pass on questionable stereotypes of women in their reportage.

In a decision with profound implications for the U.S. political system, a bare majority of the Supreme Court Thursday ruled that the government cannot limit spending by corporations on advertisements in support of individual political candidates in federal elections.

Happiness for Alok and Saddam is the bare canvas tent set up in the middle of a grassy traffic island close to Delhi Gate, the entrance to the old quarter of India’s capital.

General Sékouba Konaté, head of Guinea's military junta since the assassination attempt on Captain Moussa Dadis Camara in December has returned from a week of meetings in Burkina Faso bearing a blueprint for a return Guinea to democratic rule and constitutional order.

When Nairobi was founded in 1899, it took its name from what the Maasai called the place: Ewassi Nyirobi, 'cool waters.' A century later, the river has something stuck in its throat: millions of plastic bags and other waste, threaten to choke it.

Salam Fayyad turned civil society activist this week. In Salfit, on the West Bank, the Palestinian prime minister threw onto a giant bonfire goods made in Israeli settlements.