News headlines in December 2008

It has been a long held plan of Cambodia’s government -- a hydropower dam on the mainstream of the Mekong River in the central part of the country.

Israel is again preventing journalists from entering Gaza to report first-hand on the escalating crisis there as its military operation, codenamed Operation Cast Lead, enters its fifth day.

This is the most senseless of all the wars that Palestinians and Israelis have fought, says Israeli President Shimon Peres. The futility, he suggests, stems from the Hamas insistence, ever since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, on continuing to shell Israeli towns and villages.

As the Palestinian death toll approaches 400, much of popular anger throughout the Arab world has been directed at Egypt -- seen by many as complicit in the Israeli campaign.

The Cuban Revolution's 50th anniversary on Jan. 1 finds the country facing the challenge of sorting out the economy and improving living conditions, in the context of a complex international situation that may make reaching those goals particularly difficult.

Warm ocean currents may have confused some 2,500 penguins from Argentina's Patagonia region that washed up -- dead and alive -- on Brazil's northern coast.

Formally, the Israeli-Palestinian 'peace process' appears set to continue, in line with the last UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution. But the chances of finding a resolution are virtually nil in light of Israel's new campaign against the Gaza Strip.

The year 2008 may well go down in history as a watershed in which the global financial crisis, precipitated by the collapse of Western economic models, ‘decolonised’ Asians minds, say observers.

Burma’s military regime ended 2008 with greater resolve to steamroll over opposition voices in order to pave the way for a junta-friendly government when the country holds general elections in 2010.

Refugee rights organisations have criticised the Rudd government’s decision to hold suspected asylum seekers in a controversial detention centre on an isolated Australian island in the Indian Ocean.