News headlines in February 2010

The European Union is studying a range of measures aimed at strengthening its external borders to deter undocumented migrants from entering via Mediterranean member states such as Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Spain.

Chinese civil society is coming increasingly to the fore as wealthy tycoons create big charitable foundations and grassroots organisations form networks of their own, observers and activists say.

In military-ruled Burma’s Karen state, tradition and a male-dominated social order have long guaranteed men the role of village chiefs. But this order is crumbling in the country’s eastern region, giving rise to the new phenomenon of women village chiefs.

The refusal of Pakistani intelligence to turn over Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and as many as six other top Taliban figures to the United States or the Afghan government has dealt a serious blow to the Barack Obama administration's hopes for Pakistani cooperation in weakening the Taliban.

When last December Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, delivering to an international conference in Herzliya outside Tel Aviv what has become the equivalent of Israel's 'State of the Union' address, chose to focus not on Iran's nuclear ambitions or on the prospects of Middle East peace, but on 'the need to re-enforce our national heritage,' his vision was dismissed by supporters and critics alike as inconsequential.

When the 45-member U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) holds a two-week session beginning Monday, one of the lingering issues that will come up is the success - or failure - in the implementation of the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action on gender empowerment.

Earlier this month, Iran's ambassador to India said that his country continues to import gasoline from a private Indian oil refinery, even though the firm, Reliance Industries Ltd., had promised last year that it would stop gasoline exports to Iran, fearing U.S. sanctions.

The lives of many rural women and children in Mexico are changing, and the country's high deforestation rate could be reduced, as inexpensive fuel-efficient cook stoves are being distributed by non-governmental organisations with corporate and government support.

Many survivors of Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans and the U.S. Gulf Coast in August 2005, have been seeing their own reflection in media images of Haiti earthquake victims. And despite - or even because of - their own struggle, many feel personally driven to help organise assistance for the people of Haiti.

Legal headaches are growing exponentially for the security firm formerly known as Blackwater — once the darling of the military-industrial community.