News headlines in 2009, page 97

Every Saturday afternoon at a public house in the capital city, Lynne Anite, a journalism student at Makerere University, would join senior government officials, academics, and even business people to debate about current affairs.

Ten days after China’s mammoth Oct 1. parades celebrating its 60th anniversary as a communist nation, Taiwanese celebrated their own National Day with thoughts of brighter days despite overcast skies — and ties with the near yet far mainland.

For Father Eduardo Vasquez, setting up 'Bahay Kalinga’ (House of Care) in the province of Maguindanao, is one way of deepening his mission.

It's long been among the most durable, strategic relationships in the Near East - perhaps because it was the most unlikely.

Switzerland is a tough place for asylum-seekers and undocumented migrants. In Zurich, they have been running a remarkable campaign for the past year, challenging the canton's asylum policy. Now, they have opened their own school.

On a searing summer morning, workers are adding layers to the mud-brick police station being constructed in Sheikh Zayed, northern Gaza.

'The old man died beneath the wheels of the twentieth century. There was nothing left but stains, bloodstains and fragments of flesh... And the same thing is happening to my generation.' - Dambudzo Marechera, House of Hunger

Looking across the bay while at a restaurant built on stilts over water, Bonchai Chayapat muses over the transformed landscape once lush with a mangrove forest that today has all but vanished.

While the Cuban government has intensified its protests against the U.S. embargo, typically hostile signals between the two nations have been mixed with hints of a more relaxed tone since U.S. President Barack Obama took office.

As the conflict between government forces and Houthi fighters grinds on in the mountains of Saada in northern Yemen, thousands of Yemeni civilians, many of them children, are being forced from their homes by the fighting.