News headlines in August 2010, page 7

It was supposed to help right old wrongs as well as protect India’s forests, but four years after it took effect, a landmark law recognising the forest rights of scheduled tribes remains the subject of acrimonious debates among the country’s government officials, environmentalists, and rights advocates.

Wearing a floppy cotton cap for shade, an exhausted Sarawut Kunrapang enters the compound of a mosque in the blistering afternoon sunshine. It is the latest stop for this 27-year-old Thai Buddhist in his walk for peace since mid-July from Bangkok.

Rightwing Israeli groups financially supported by Jewish and fundamentalist Christian groups from abroad are on a campaign to undermine free thought in Israeli universities. Collaterally, a move is under way by right-wing parties in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to limit the freedom of action of civil and human rights-minded NGOs.

Five newborns died last week in a fire caused by an airconditioning fault at a Bucharest maternity. Insufficient, overworked staff and deficient maintenance -- results of inadequate funding of the health system - -were listed among the causes.

- Environmental experts in Russia have warned that unless urgent steps are taken internationally, climatic changes combined with man-made factors could reduce the world's population of polar bears by as much as 70 percent by 2060.

It was his second time to be caught stealing a car, so Turki was meted a jail term of five years. But the young repeat offender was only 17 years old at the time of his arrest, and therefore was still considered a minor under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

An average of 100 people go missing and between 40 and 50 unidentified bodies are found every month in this Brazilian city -- mysteries that could be cleared up simply with the sharing of information across agencies, a task that judicial and forensic experts have begun to successfully implement.

U.N. member states and regional organisations debated the question of how Somali pirates should be prosecuted in a Security Council meeting Wednesday, following a report submitted last month by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outlining seven possible legal options.

When she gets up in the morning, Ghadeer Malek, a young Palestinian feminist activist, checks her Facebook page to keep up on new developments and messages linked to her work.

South African farm workers — especially female labourers — continue to be exploited, despite the existence of national labour laws and regulations designed to protect them. But in the absence of information and education about their rights, workers have a hard time claiming them.