News headlines in 2009, page 89

After a nearly two-decade truce, Portuguese Nobel literature laureate José Saramago has returned to the charge against the Catholic Church. This time his target is the Bible itself, which he describes as 'a manual of bad morals,' and a 'catalogue of cruelties and of the worst of human nature.'

It has been more than eight years since the January 2001 earthquake struck the Indian state of Gujarat, but Hansa Rathore still cannot quite shake off memories of that not too distant past — all because it left her a widow.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday called for strengthening the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect suspected nuclear-related facilities and ruled out lifting sanctions against North Korea until it took 'verifiable and irreversible' steps toward denuclearisation.

'This is where we get our water from,' says a villager on the footpath leading out of Mcondece. Branches and other debris float on the surface of the sluggish, murky brown creek.

The United Nation Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) claims that Kenya has more drug users than any other East African country. UNODC estimates there are 100,000 cocaine users, 200,000 using opiates like heroin and four million who smoke cannabis.

A record 106 million infants were vaccinated in 2008 - the highest rate of immunisation ever - according to a report released Wednesday in Washington, but NGOs are calling for an increase in funding to fill the gap affecting the world's poorest nations and communities.

'It was late in the evening, and we were just getting ready for bed. Three men in black police uniforms and another four in military camouflage came to our house. They said my sons have been involved in attacks against Chinese... they twisted their arms and led them away,' said Kamalutdin K.

StandWithUs - an 'organization that ensures that Israel's side of the story is told' - has become increasingly aggressive in challenging the 'pro-Israel' credentials of moderate Jewish-American groups, going so far as to suggest that receiving money from Arab donors and supporters of Human Rights Watch undermines a group's commitment to Israel and peace.

Peru is only one percentage point away from halving the proportion of its people living in extreme poverty, one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed by the international community in 2000, according to a United Nations report.

Chile's private pension system lost 30 percent of its overall value during the current financial crisis, writes Manuel Riesco, a Chilean economist, vice president of the Centre for National Studies of Alternative Development (CENDA), and director of the Foundation for Overcoming Poverty.