News headlines in February 2011

Access to affordable medicine for millions of people in the South could be at risk if the production and distribution of generic medicine from India is restricted.

Two million compact fluorescent lamps will be distributed to households and industry in Malawi by June, in just one of several measures to bridge the gap between electricity supply and demand. Across Southern Africa, energy shortfalls threaten to choke development.

A leading rights group here condemned actions taken by Bahraini security forces in suppressing peaceful protests in recent weeks, including the deaths of seven Bahraini citizens in the last fortnight, and called for a 'transparent and independent investigation into government initiated violence'.

International efforts to strangle Muammar Gaddafi's regime are intensifying, as Western leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, call for the autocrat's immediate departure, while the Pentagon and key allies consider contingency plans for a potential no-fly zone over the North African nation.

After 35 years of campaigning and legal action by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the first trial over the systematic theft of babies of political prisoners during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship began Monday.

Thuan has had little luck. In his youth he joined the 'boat people' fleeing Vietnam to Indonesia. Deported back after six years, carrying the stigma of an anti-communist, he could not find a job.

Wildebeests have the Serengeti, and tiny krill the sea ice. But in the upside-down world of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the biggest shows on earth would pass unheeded except for the work of a band of polar scientists seeking clues to what changes in temperatures and sea ice levels mean to wildlife.

A protestor held out a handful of metal dust, part of the 'silvery rain' falling that day in Santa Cruz, a low-income neighbourhood on the west side of this Brazilian city, as proof of the environmental nightmare affecting the area ever since a German steel plant opened there.

Besieged Libyan leader Muammar el-Gaddafi, who has incurred the wrath of his own people and drawn punitive strictures from the international community, is now under attack by a coalition of over 200 Arab non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including a group of intellectuals from across the Middle East.

The just-announced Canada-U.S. security perimetre discussions are comprehensive and potentially wide-ranging and could impact Canadian sovereignty. However, the domestic opposition appears to have been caught off-guard.