News headlines in 2009, page 61

José, a 46-year-old street vendor in the Salvadoran capital, says he is happy that the leftist government of Mauricio Funes decided to put more army troops on the streets to help fight the soaring levels of crime.

Next week's United Nations food security summit is in danger of becoming a massive missed opportunity, experts and non-governmental organisations say. Fears mount that top leaders will not show up, and binding new commitments will not materialise.

Here is a sobering thought on the eve of Children’s Day celebrated across India on Nov. 14. Despite the country’s impressive economic growth trajectory and growing geopolitical heft, the benefits of that prosperity are not percolating down to its children who constitute a sizeable 30 percent of the country’s 1.2 billion population.

'No more commitments... We have had enough of the promises. Can we please see something happening on the ground? Right now, it is business as usual and that’s why Africa is off-track on the MDG target.'

It is a story that spans three islands, across the breadth of the Indian Ocean. That is, of hundreds of boat people sailing the rough seas in unseaworthy vessels, risking life and limb in their desperate attempt at a new lease of life.

Senior military and Barack Obama administration officials have been on a full-court press to preempt an anti-Muslim backlash since the shooting spree by a Muslim soldier at Fort Hood, Texas, but right-wing pundits have wasted no time in characterising Major Nidal Malik Hasan's actions as an act of terrorism by a radical Islamic extremist.

More than a year after his election, President Barack Obama appears to be dashing hopes both in the Arab world and in Latin America that he would bring major changes in U.S. policy toward their respective regions.

Last season, for the first time in her more than 20 years as a farmer, Elizabeth Runema harvested her maize crop at the beginning of February.

Carbon trading, as promoted by the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), has become a key global strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It is one of the world’s oldest professions, dating so far back that it is even mentioned in the Bible. But in the deeply cultural and religious country of Swaziland, Senator Thuli Msane stirred a hornet’s nest when she publicly challenged a new strict bill opposing prostitution.