News headlines in August 2011, page 13

Nestled between rolling hills just outside of Jerusalem, a dozen Palestinian workers have escaped the scorching summer heat in the shade of a makeshift tent, where they anxiously wait to sign what would be the first collective bargaining agreement between Palestinian workers and an Israeli employer.

After tiptoeing toward demanding the ouster of Bashir Al-Assad over the last several months, U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday finally jumped over the line with his first explicit call for the Syrian president to resign.

Biofuels are an alternative energy source that can drive local development by generating jobs, know-how and technology. But they can also cause social damage, as locals fear in the case of industrial-scale exploitation of babassu palm trees, which grow abundantly in the wild in central and northern Brazil.

Witnesses reported that attacks continue on civilian populations in Sudan, even as the United Nations calls for a thorough investigation into violations of international law carried out in South Kordofan state in June.

The donor base for UN Women has expanded to 95 countries since the new United Nations entity was launched at the start of this year, according to Lakshmi Puri, the assistant secretary-general and deputy executive director of UN Women.

Jamaal Abdi, an eight-year-old boy at the Badbaado camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu, would like to have an education. He has his own dreams for the future.

The World Wildlife Federation (WWF) has called for urgent action to prevent the extinction of freshwater dolphins in the Mekong River, including the creation of special conservation zones.

For the first time, a representative of the indigenous communities in Peru's Amazonas region is sitting in Congress: Eduardo Nayap, an Awajún leader who played a central role in the lengthy protests against laws that opened up native territories in the rainforest to oil, mining and logging companies.

Malawi is reducing the production of tobacco following huge losses by smallholder tobacco farmers and commercial estates trading the crop on the country’s only official tobacco markets, the auction floors.

When Andrew Poku's mother passed away he needed help to pay for her funeral. So the 35-year-old teacher from Accra turned to one of the country's several loan companies for a 670-dollar loan.