News headlines in April 2010, page 2

The acquittal by a Peruvian court of two soldiers and a police officer charged with the forced disappearance of four peasant farmers in the Andean highlands region of Ayacucho is viewed as a serious setback by the families of victims of human rights violations during the 1980-2000 civil war.

Zambia is pushing forward with formulating an anti-counterfeit draft law which will include medicines, despite the controversy that has surrounded similar laws in East Africa and despite having existing legislation which has been used to successfully prosecute counterfeiters of medicines.

Perween Riaz, 36, waited till after she gave birth to her sixth child before she finally got herself sterilised.

Kyaw Moe is just in his 30s, but he is already on his second shot at life — just like the rest of the residents of Thakan Ngu, a tiny Burmese village in this township of Bogalay.

Though the global economic crisis has eased in most of Asia, latest reports about falling demand for garments in markets like Europe and the United States have become a new source of concern to Sri Lanka’s troubled garment labour force.

A violent incident in which two activists were killed in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca has raised fears among human rights groups of a return to the unrest and severe clashes between protesters and police that virtually paralysed the state in 2006.

'You will never suffer from fatal diseases like cancer and ulcer if you drink mare's milk,' says Anna Postnikova, who is currently attending a major U.N. meeting on indigenous issues.

The abolition of nuclear weapons - and a halt to the spread of the deadly armaments - will be a major talking point at the month-long Review Conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), scheduled to take place at the United Nations beginning next week.

Last year, at least 77 journalists were killed simply for doing their jobs. So far this year, the number is 17 - and rising - with three of them killed last Saturday.

At Ekuvinjelweni village, in South Africa's Mpumalanga Province, the Komati River flows clear and fast through the mountains. Along its banks here are commercial farms with intensive irrigation works, mixed with subsistence farmers who rely on rain for their fields and livestock - a tricky proposition in an area that has endured severe droughts in the past.