News headlines in 2010, page 2

Farming around the globe, already reeling from drought, heat waves and major storms, will have to prepare for the new challenges that global warming will bring, especially in the form of pests and disease.

Brazil hopes to eventually become a major producer of palm oil, thanks to the expansion of this new exotic monoculture crop in the eastern Amazon jungle, where eucalyptus plantations are also mushrooming on broad swaths of already deforested land.

Just before sunrise 39-year -old Alan Simons, an emerging small-scale farmer, gets ready for his usual nine-hour day of harvesting, packing and deliveries. In his black Nissan van he drives ten kilometres to the seaside town of Strand outside of Cape Town to pick up his six workers, all of who are women.

For decades, fisheries around the world have relied on practices that take for granted certain assumptions about the industry, such as protecting younger fish while exploiting older fish and using trophic levels to monitor the health of fisheries. Recently, however, some scientists have begun to question these unanimously accepted practices. Experts are beginning to think that the science behind the global fishing industry may be completely wrong.

While China faces grave water shortages, researchers at institutions across the country are working on new water- saving and desalination technologies that they hope can alleviate the crisis in the crucial years to come.

Nearly 12 months ago, when the U.N. heralded 2010 as the ‘International Year of Biodiversity’, unrealistic goals seemed to indicate failure for the ambitious initiative. But now that the year is drawing to a close, some experts also see the year’s progress as encouraging, and a reason for optimism.

Over the past years, acceptance rates for asylum-seekers in Central and Eastern Europe have been decreasing slowly but steadily. Even for those who do receive protected status, life is a gamble.

As a peer educator at a local HIV/AIDS organisation, Ahmad (not his real name) has taken care to teach his own wife anything and everything he knows about the disease.

With three small children to raise in a dirt-poor village in eastern India’s Bihar state, farm labourer Renu Devi is an unsung rural supermom who shuttles between home and field every day.

The murder of Henry Suazo, a correspondent for a radio station based in the capital, brought this year's death toll for reporters in Honduras to 10, and made this Central American nation the second most dangerous country for journalists in Latin America, after Mexico.