News headlines in February 2010, page 4

More and more Uruguayans are keen on building ecological homes. The problem is that there is hardly any market or specialised labour for what is known as 'bio-building.'

Arms manufacturers have been asked to advise an official European Union (EU) body on how their products can be used to stop asylum seekers entering the bloc’s territory.

Forty-something and unlettered, Sona Siddiqi never imagined she would become the most sought-after woman in her village of Ramzan Katiar.

The Nu River flows from the Tibetan highlands through China’s western Yunnan province, cutting between two mountain ranges before rushing through Burma into the Andaman Sea. It is home to a third of the country’s ethnic groups and a diverse ecosystem of 7,000 species of plants and 80 rare or endangered animals and fish.

When Aye Aye (not her real name) leaves her youngest son at home each night, she tells him that she has to work selling snacks. But what Aye actually sells is sex so that her 12-year-old son, a Grade 7 student, can finish his education.

Several dozen anti-government opponents gathered Wednesday at the headquarters of the Ladies in White, a Cuban dissident group, in the capital, to hold a 'symbolic wake' for Orlando Zapata, a political prisoner who died on the 85th day of a hunger strike.

U.S. officials expressed concern here Wednesday that the return of Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua, after a three-month stay in a Saudi hospital, could destabilise the oil-rich West African country.

Nearly 62 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaimed 'all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,' a few of the world's discriminatory laws against women are being progressively repealed in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America.

Every Tuesday you will find 70-year-old Precious Dlamini under a tree, weighing children and babies from her local community as she monitors their health and nutrition.

Two months after the Copenhagen conference on climate change, which was widely regarded as a fiasco, the international community is meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali to discuss biodiversity and ecosystems, promote the green economy and carry out institutional reforms.