News headlines in August 2010, page 3

When an Asian ambassador hosted a sumptuous lunch for more than a dozen U.N. correspondents in his swanky New York apartment many moons ago, he confessed he had a hidden agenda.

In an effort to introduce a story of 'progress' into media coverage, Gen. David Petraeus’s command claimed last week that the Taliban is suffering from reduced morale in Marjah and elsewhere, despite evidence that the population of Marjah still believes the Taliban controls that district.

Feng Jun's fight against a local government and the steel mills he believes polluted the water that killed his daughter has cost him nearly everything.

A breakdown in Pakistan’s justice system, a sign of a society desensitised to violence, an example of mob brutality.

As the November general election in Burma approaches, the country’s junta is revealing the political designs underway in order to place the powerful military under civilian authority after a lapse of 22 years.

The 17th Titirilandia (Puppetland) Festival will conclude with a marathon puppet show, to be held Sunday Aug. 29 in Spain's capital city in aid of a school in the remote Bolivian mining province of Potosí.

Thirty-four years ago, Canada was one of the first Western countries to abolish the death penalty. In 1987, the question of capital punishment and whether it should be reinstated resurfaced in the House of Commons.

As details emerged this week of the U.N.'s knowledge of rebel activity in the villages where nearly 200 women were systematically gang raped by armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) late last month, human rights groups are demanding an investigation into the U.N.'s failure to prevent the raid from occurring.

In the wake of the bungled hostage-rescue operation that left eight Hong Kong tourists and the gunman dead, the Philippine media are finding themselves a target of anger by many who say that sensationalism and no-holds-barred coverage added to the bloody end to a crisis they call an international embarrassment.

As Hamas cracks down on the rights of Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip, their sisters in the occupied West Bank are slowly gaining ground. But a bureaucracy, that is sometimes supported by foreign aid, is crippling these advances.