News headlines in January 2010, page 2

The World Social Forum held in Nairobi in 2007 inspired Sierra Leonean activists to organise themselves to demand things like housing, health care and greater accountability from their government. That inspiration was not sustained.

The pledge by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide 10 billion dollars over 10 years on vaccines aimed at reducing child mortality in the world's poorest countries was hailed by global health organisations around the world Friday.

Every morning Pepe Julian Onziema wakes up not knowing if she will live to see another rising sun. Onziema is transgender and she lives in fear for her life because of a national campaign criminalising gay people.

In a surprisingly swift move on Thursday night that could have wide-ranging implications, the U.S. Senate passed a bill containing broad unilateral sanctions to punish foreign companies that export gasoline to Iran or help expand its domestic refinery capabilities.

'Why is the government, which is so generous towards the richest sectors of the economy, so stingy towards the displaced?' asked activist Marco Romero at the presentation of a new report on the dire situation faced by the millions of Colombians who have been forced out of their rural homes by the country's nearly half-century old armed conflict.

Television viewers in the United States seeking international news are starting to switch over to foreign channels to learn what is happening in the outside world, media watchers here say.

The United Nations is predicting that the world's developing nations will recover faster than industrial countries - even as they both try to struggle out of the post-2007 global financial crisis.

The elimination of racism remains unfinished business in Cuba today. 'We have to admit that the problem exists, determine its impact on the social model that we defend, and tackle it in depth,' says Esteban Morales, an Afro-Cuban economist, political scientist and author of numerous articles and essays on the subject.

Salidhana village, a mere blip on the vast and arid landscape of India’s central state of Madhya Pradesh, was devoid of life’s most basic necessity — water. Until last year, there was no well in this hamlet of about a hundred families. Women would trudge hours daily to fetch water from distant areas, often losing their balance on the hilly village’s treacherous slopes.

Biodiversity, already decaying fast as a result of climate change and intensive farming, is under further threat by genetic modification (GM) of seeds, says a leading German ecological activist.