News headlines in 2010, page 56

The United Nations is fighting a losing battle trying to convince the repressive military junta in Burma (Myanmar) that nationwide elections scheduled for next week should be both 'credible' and 'inclusive'.

The revelation by Wikileaks of a U.S. military order directing U.S. forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the U.S. military about detainee abuse.

As the movement for the abolition of the death penalty gains ground worldwide, Guatemala is seeking to reintroduce capital punishment, which has been in legal limbo since 2000. Congress has already approved a law paving the way for the execution of 41 death row inmates.

A military jury at Guantanamo Bay sentenced a 'child soldier' to 40 years in prison — unaware that Omar Khadr's defence and prosecution lawyers had already agreed on an eight-year sentence and further agreed that the United States would send the Canadian home next year.

Gulf coast fishers, conservationists, seafood distributors and oil workers rallied here at Louisiana's capital over the weekend to demand that oil giant BP be held accountable for the 'ongoing' use of toxic dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico.

Four months after Peru's worst toxic spill of mining waste, workers at the Caudalosa mine are demanding that it be reopened, while local communities want more cleanup of the rivers they depend on for water supplies.

The international community has finally awoken to the other great trans-boundary challenge of our time, with a new international agreement to halt the unravelling of the web of life that sustains humanity.

Although women are a majority of the population, the electorate, and doctoral students in Brazil, have more years of schooling on average than men, and hold almost half of all formal sector jobs, they remain a tiny minority in positions of political power. But South America's giant will now have its first woman president, Dilma Rousseff.

Will U.S. local law enforcement be forced to participate in a programme that critics say will put city police in the position of enforcing federal immigration law and, in the process, divert scarce resources from essential community policing, discourage immigrants from working with police to solve crimes and increase racial profiling?

Agricultural analysts are predicting a strong grain harvest for Argentina, where soy, maize and wheat are among the engines driving the national economy. But farmers are more circumspect as they plant this year's crops in the southern hemisphere spring season.