News headlines in December 2010, page 10

The U.S. Senate's repeal of the military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy Saturday ended what had become for many an embarrassing and awkward policy - and marked a rare victory for the agenda of President Barack Obama in the U.S. Congress.

Cubans are delving deeper into economic change, which means new taxes and an end to the state subsidies that for decades were a symbol of the equality so highly extolled under the Cuban Revolution.

A public children’s television channel broadcasting high quality fiction, animation and documentary programmes designed by the Argentine Education Ministry for the two-to-12 age range can now be viewed elsewhere in Latin America via the internet.

Few in Washington want to talk much about Iraq these days.

Hermes Chimombo, a welder in his 50s, is a revered man in the impoverished Naotcha Township. Armed with rudimentary tools and a passion to ease people’s suffering, he has tapped a spring in the mountain above the slum to provide water for its 25,000 residents.

Returning home from work recently, farmer Baidhar Singh was aghast to find his thatched hut in Balasore district, Orissa trampled to the ground. Just a few hundred metres away stood the culprits, huge and grey against the darkening sky: a herd of 65 wild elephants.

The legendary Scheherazade has exchanged her enthralling tales of 'One Thousand and One Nights' for a compact disc with 1,001 academic articles, essays and books, giving Cubans access to materials that would otherwise be very difficult to obtain.

According to Vision 2030, which is a government strategic plan on how to boost growth and development in Kenya, there are an estimated 5 million out of an estimated 8 million households who depend directly on agriculture, despite the fact that agriculture continues to be one of the most under-budgeted Ministries. ale.

Retail giants pushing the European Union-India free trade deal promise consumers a 'new and dynamic retail experience' but ignore the fate of India’s 'mom-and-pop' stores and some 40 million people they employ.

More and more Palestinians are paying the price for deadlocked talks over Israel’s continued settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.