News headlines in 2009, page 348

Seven major U.S. and international rights groups are calling on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make human rights issues a top priority in her meetings in Beijing next week with Chinese officials.

The HIV infection rate in women over 50 in Brazil has more than tripled since 1996, making this population group the prime target of the government's HIV/AIDS prevention campaign during the carnival festivities.

Rarely a week goes by without a problem of water scarcity hitting the headlines. The acute droughts in Kenya, Argentina and the U.S. state of California are among the latest phenomena to illustrate that the global environment has been dangerously degraded. And participants in the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, heard that the planet could be destined towards 'water bankruptcy'.

For months now, yellowed pastures, cracked soil and dead livestock have been the landscape of what otherwise are the most productive farming areas of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Scientists say it is so far impossible to determine if the drought is a manifestation of climate change processes.

A prominent British-American lawyer who represents an Ethiopian-born Guantanamo detainee is charging that U.S. Defence Department officials are intentionally concealing evidence of his client's rendition and torture from President Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair did not appear to be on the same page this week when they talked about Iran's nuclear intentions. Obama referred in his news conference to Iran's 'development of a nuclear weapon or their pursuit of a nuclear weapon', but Blair said 'we do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons'.

'Dora', a young Mexican woman, was helped by another Mexican woman to cross the U.S. border in the promise of a good job there. She ended up in Texas, working in a sweatshop and not allowed to go out or even take a shower.

Shipping used to be for men. Now women are starting to be seen commanding merchant vessels, oil tankers and cruisers, 'manning' ships and operating liner engines.

Back in mid-December, many Middle Easterners were daring to hope that, with the imminent end of George Bush's presidency, their own deeply U.S.-influenced region might see a new day of peacemaking and inclusiveness in place of the recent years of war, confrontation, discrimination and distrust.

The global recession has exposed the ideological fissures at the highest level of officialdom in the European Union.