News headlines in February 2010, page 24

Sri Lankans witnessed one of the country’s most contentious elections ever when President Mahinda Rajapaksa staved off the challenge posed by his former Army commander, Sarath Fonseka, and clinched more than 1.8 million majority votes during the Jan. 26 poll.

Poland’s pension cuts on tens of thousands of former communist functionaries and secret police officers are adding fillip to campaigns in other East European states for similar legislation.

As Kanwal Gul, 25, lay on the delivery table a year ago, preparing to give birth to her first child, she made sure the traditional birth attendant (TBA) assisting her knew exactly what to do. Put on the gloves, she instructed her.

Although Huancavelica is the poorest region of Peru, it has more than just poverty, malnutrition and unmet needs. There are also women using their creativity, efforts and traditional indigenous knowledge to improve the diets of their families and communities.

Exotic tree seedlings grow next to native species in the southeastern German village of Laufen, at a site where researchers are experimenting with ways to restore forests lost to the effects of global warming.

Amid growing concerns here over the threat posed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a consensus is emerging among U.S. experts that Washington and other donors to Yemen must place at least as much or greater emphasis on promoting sustainable development in the Arab world's poorest country as on counterterrorism.

Ethiopia is building a 240-metre high dam on the Omo River that is intended to end the country's electricity shortage and supply power to neighbouring countries. Not everyone's happy.

A textbook on human rights activism, being introduced in Romanian schools this year, steers away from preaching and uses interviews with global and local rights activists to suggest how young people may get involved.

If medals are being given out for backbreaking labour on miserable wages and impossible working conditions, thousands of migrant workers, slaving to complete stadia and other facilities for the October Commonwealth Games in the Indian capital, will be the champions.

Member states meeting here Thursday called for the immediate implementation of development commitments made during the Nairobi high-level U.N. conference on cooperation between developing countries.