News headlines in September 2009, page 3

Addressing his monthly press conference Tuesday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon refused to back a Western endorsement of a premature election victory for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, implicitly criticised Libyan Leader Muammar el-Qaddafi for denigrating the U.N. charter, and faulted Iran for lack of transparency in its nuclear programme.

The electoral authorities and allies of Honduras' de facto government in Congress have criticised the suspension of key civil liberties, while the top military chief called for talks between de facto President Roberto Micheletti and ousted President Manuel Zelaya, who has been holed up in the Brazilian embassy since early last week.

A little over 38 years ago, when Daniel Ellsberg released the 'Pentagon Papers' to The New York Times and other newspapers, it set off one of the 20th century's most important battles over government secrecy and freedom of the press.

The plans for a common market in the East African Community (EAC) are proceeding apace and should fall in place on Jan 1, 2010, the target date of implementation. But Uganda’s traders are concerned that they will be unable to compete with traders from their country’s larger neighbour Kenya when the new common market starts.

The largest homeless shelter in the southeast U.S., the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, has filed a lawsuit against the city of Atlanta claiming officials have undertaken a complex campaign to sabotage the shelter with the ultimate goal of driving homeless, mostly African American men off the streets of downtown.

In Malawi where maize crop surplus fills the national storehouses to capacity, farmers Ida and Montfort Salijeni and their four children have turned to wild tubers for food.

Fair trade is becoming popular in Central and Eastern Europe, as activist groups raise awareness of the region's responsibility towards the rest of the world, and open an increasing number of fair trade shops and cafes.

A world free of nuclear weapons is no longer utopia - it is a concrete possibility, says Daisaku Ikeda, president of the Buddhist association Soka Gokkai International (SGI).

Migrants are still wandering homeless after the immigration camp at Calais in France was razed to the ground a week back.

The current crisis has precipitated a significant downturn in world foreign direct investment (FDI) flows which over the past year has spread to all sectors and regions. 2008 marked the end of a growth cycle in international investment that began in 2003 and reached a historic high of nearly $2 trillion in 2007, writes Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).