News headlines in 2010, page 73

Northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province has many charms to draw foreign visitors, from hilltribe communities dressed in colourful ethnic clothes, trips to gentle hills close to the Burmese and Lao borders, excursions to once infamous opium trails and a journey along the Mekong River.

Ten years after the Security Council issued its landmark resolution 1325, designed to address the 'disproportionate and unique impact of war on women', U.N. officials and international human rights advocates say it is high time the principles it espouses move from paper to reality.

Asserting that 'the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will', the head of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) and other U.S. civil rights leaders are calling on the populist political grouping to purge itself of known racists lest they influence the direction of the movement.

As controlled field trials of a genetically modified (GM) crop are about to begin in five African countries amidst promises of improved crops grown under poor conditions, critics are charging organisations of selling out the interests of African farmers.

Jowaali Dhikusoka sits on the side of the road, alone and bored. The twelve-year-old doesn’t play much with the other children in his village because he has trouble walking. His hands and feet are infested with sand fleas, in Uganda commonly called jiggers, which itch and cause him a lot of pain.

The Zolinger family, a typical example of those who migrated from southern Brazil to the Amazon in search of land and fortune, now has a second chance in the lumber industry, after contributing to the devastation of the forests in Rondônia state, where they settled in 1979.

While women have made strides forward in areas like job market participation over the last two decades, in 2009 only 14 women in the world held the position of head of state or government, and of the 500 largest corporations, just 13 had a female CEO.

Every year since 1975, Castro Solano has left his home in the town of Tlapa de Comonfort, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, to work in other parts of the country as a seasonal farm labourer.

Guatemala has more than 700,000 clandestine garbage dumps. But a growing network of public and private sector employees are receiving training in integrated waste management that they in turn pass on to others, as part of a unique cooperation initiative with Mexico and Germany.

Blame Canada if countries fail to agree to a new binding treaty to curb the rapid loss of plant, animal and species that form the intricate web of life that sustains humanity. That is the view of indigenous representatives from Canada in response to a late night move by the Canadian delegation to strike a reference to indigenous peoples' rights at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) members' conference here.