News headlines in 2009, page 74

The past week brought new scrutiny of Zimbabwe's human rights record with the deportation of a senior U.N. official sent to investigate torture there, and demands by a coalition of civil society groups that the international community address human rights violations stemming from Zimbabwe's lucrative diamond industry.

More than 1,500 representatives of waste recyclers from 13 countries, and thousands of other visitors, including the host country Brazil's left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, met last week in São Paulo, demonstrating that they are no longer pariahs in our throw-away society.

'You often ask yourself why feed them if some wretch is just going to come along and sell them that rubbish,' says Isabel Ruiz, who runs the Las Brujas soup kitchen in Moreno, a poor neighbourhood on the west side of the Argentine capital.

The state board responsible for licensing - and disciplining - psychologists in Louisiana is accused of turning a blind eye to serious allegations of abuse against one of its members, including complicity in beatings, religious and sexual humiliation, rape threats and painful body positions during his service as a senior advisor on interrogations for the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Chile currently stands out for its spectacular progress in a number of health indicators, including maternal and child mortality and chronic malnutrition. But these successes obscure an acute social problem that refuses to yield: the steady rise in the number of teenage mothers.

In Chitsa, a village with some 2,000 inhabitants located about 250 km from Zimbabwe’s capital of Harare, it has become difficult to conduct everyday transactions involving money.

The global climate change caravan has arrived in Barcelona for a last round of talks before the Copenhagen summit. What's at stake for Africa?

Niamatullah joined the Afghan National Police (ANP) for the same reasons that many Afghan men do.

As the world focuses on the impact of climate change, little attention is being paid to yet another environmental bane: increasing contamination of air, water and soil.

'Migrant workers bring with them a profusion of diseases - hepatitis, measles, tuberculosis, AIDS and drug addiction: Our critics can be as sanctimonious as they like, but unless we stop the wave of migrant workers, the whole character of the State of Israel, its Jewish character, will be under threat.'