News headlines in August 2010

Good news has become harder to come by these days in Afghanistan, especially as the war-ravaged country gears up for the parliamentary election scheduled on Sep. 18.

Franklin Brito, who held several long hunger strikes since 2004 to defend ownership of his farm, became the first Venezuelan to fast to the death.

Among its unstable and conflict-ridden neighbours, Rwanda stands out. It has been pegged as a model of development and one of Africa’s success stories: Since the 1990’s, when a civil war ravaged the country, average incomes have doubled, its people have become healthier and less hungry and it has the highest proportion of women parliamentarians worldwide. Yet, maintaining this stability is a government accused of muzzling its opponents and committing human rights abuses.

In cities across Africa, being an entrepreneur requires no office, business card or investors. All it takes is a cell phone, according to Adele Botha, a researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa.

Environmentalists are alarmed: fires have destroyed close to 100,000 hectares of forest in Portugal this summer, releasing one million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Worst of all, the forests are losing their ability to absorb carbon.

The heat in the upper six miles of the earth’s crust contains 50,000 times as much energy as found in all the world’s oil and gas reserves combined. Despite this abundance, only 10,700 megawatts of geothermal electricity generating capacity have been harnessed worldwide.

Two of the nation’s most influential human rights organisations have filed a lawsuit challenging the government’s authority to carry out 'targeted killings' of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.

Military auditors failed to complete an audit of the business systems of an Ohio- based company - Mission Essential Personnel - even though it had billed for one billion dollars worth of work largely in Afghanistan over the last four years.

With its thick forest cover and abundant wildlife, the Dawna mountain range in south-eastern Burma is coming in the way of a flagship highway project being pushed by one of Asia’s premier financiers of roads.

Thousands of Israelis have protested in a central park here demanding that their government revoke its decision to deport 400 children of migrant workers.