News headlines in February 2010, page 3

As its promised transition to democratic rule begins, the military junta that overthrew Nigerien president Mamadou Tandja on February 18 has named a former information minister, Mahamadou Danda, as the new prime minister while retaining legislative and executive powers for itself.

Less than a month into his term, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo is facing street protests, complaints of human rights violations, and criticism of the truth commission he set up to investigate the Jun. 28 coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya

The death penalty remains an apparently fixed feature in many societies because it enjoys the approval or consent of a large majority of the population, or is based on supposed ancestral values or traditions.

Russian efforts to acquire oil and gas fields in Africa and prospect for minerals on the resource-rich continent have yielded little success over the past decade due to lack of a coherent national strategy, experts say.

Brazil is lobbying hard to get the rest of Latin America to adopt the Brazilian version of the Japanese digital television standard, as Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela have already done.

Women who fled conflict and oppression in military-ruled Burma have become a potent political force during their lives in exile, says a leading women’s rights activist from the South-east Asian country’s Shan ethnic minority.

For garment factory workers like Anoma Piyaseele, the European Union’s (EU) concessionary tariffs for imports from Sri Lanka meant little more than a vague term for policymakers to deal with — until news came that they would be suspended soon.

Young Indian women are increasingly taking to careers in journalism, but this trend is restricted to the metropolises and to non-decision making positions in media organisations, leading women journalists say.

Maize farmer Anita Yunus has lived near the Mulanje Mountain in southern Malawi for over 30 years. And she does not remember there ever being a drought in the area.

More than 1,000 activists and experts attending this week's Fourth World Congress Against the Death Penalty in this Swiss city are building a network of cooperation to support local organisations campaigning for human rights in countries that retain capital punishment.