News headlines in August 2011, page 30

Barbecue fires along the winding trail through the Sesaot forest reserve act as guides for delegates walking to an international forestry conference at a nearby beach resort.

'Even if 100,000 people die of starvation in North Korea, foreigners working there will not see it,' says a humanitarian worker who spent three years in the impoverished, communist country.

Muslims in the United States express greater tolerance for members of other faiths than any other major religious group, according to a major new survey and report released here Thursday by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center.

West African health experts are calling for governments to take the prevalence of hepatitis B and C more seriously, and to act to reduce the cost of treatment as part of more effective control of the disease.

The Barack Obama administration promised Tuesday that the U.S. would not prosecute relief agencies for delivering aid to parts of Somalia controlled by the Islamist insurgent group al- Shabaab, despite concerns that unrestricted aid in the failed state would be diverted to the wrong hands.

Cuban President Raúl Castro’s announcement of coming changes to migration policy appears to be the result of repeated demands by the population for freedom to travel, a right ensnared for decades in the Cuba-United States conflict.

Israeli policies are destroying the livelihoods of Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank and the Negev in southern Israel, activists and aid workers warn.

Record levels of radiation have been recorded at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant reactor, just months after the nuclear accident resulting from the earthquake and tsunami in March.

Syrian troops have again advanced in the central city of Hama, taking up new positions a day after activists said government forces killed 24 people throughout the country on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

When a jury acquitted a Jamaican-born American pastor of carnal abuse charges in June, outraged islanders were forced to recognise that cultural norms seem to be promoting the sexual abuse of young girls.