News headlines in August 2010, page 4

The European Union (EU) is failing to fulfil its environmental commitments in practically all areas, from protecting biodiversity to improving air quality in the cities, according to official studies released this month.

Controversial plans to build the Barrancones thermoelectric plant near a protected area in the northern Chilean region of Coquimbo were cancelled Friday, but not before reopening debate on other projects for polluting coal-fired power stations.

Experts from 13 Latin American countries called for a shift in counter-drug policies from a punitive to a public health-based approach for users, in order to reduce drug-related violence, on the argument that the current 'war on drugs' has been lost in the region.

The first International Day against Nuclear Testing will be marked Sunday by festivities in Astana, Kazakhstan and major cities around the world, with the goal of raising awareness of the importance of banning nuclear tests and to educate people on the catastrophic effects past tests have had on human beings and the environment.

Sudan's elusive President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and the unrelenting Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno-Ocampo are playing a political cat- and-mouse game.

New challenges and a long list of shocking cases involving hidden power structures are faced by the new head of the United Nations-mandated International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).

As regulators traced the U.S. salmonella outbreak spread by infected eggs back to the hen feed used at two Iowa farms Thursday, many groups are pointing the blame at the factory farm system from which the eggs — and bacteria — came.

At six in the morning in Cite Soleil, the poorest zone of Haiti's capital city, the sun is already up. It's the start of another workday for Lurene Jeanti, making cookies from mud, butter and salt. She's been mixing the ingredients on the side of the road to sell to her neighbours for the past eight years.

Civil society organisations have reacted with outrage to claims that the international campaign against genetically modified (GM) crops is partly responsible for food shortages and food insecurity in Africa.

In the first ever U.N.-mandated self-assessment of the United States' human rights record, the Barack Obama administration has reaffirmed its commitment to closing the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay and to fixing the country's 'broken immigration system'.