News headlines in 2010, page 75

In June 2009, Chilean army captain Andrea Fuentes travelled to the city of Cap-Haïtien, in north Haiti, to serve for six months in her country's contingent in the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

'When we women speak out, without showing fear, we pay a high price: living with that fear,' says one peace activist in Colombia. 'The threats will not stop us from working for peace and social justice,' says another.

As military-ruled Burma heads towards its first general election in two decades in November, its citizens are tuning in to their enduring faith in the old communication order — the power of the radio.

China’s top legislative body is considering scrapping the death penalty for 13 non-violent crimes, including tax evasion, tomb raiding and animal smuggling. But the impact these changes will have on the total number of prisoners the country puts to death is uncertain.

Media watchdogs see the 'invisible hand' of the ruling party behind a string of firings and resignations that have removed some of Egypt's most prominent government critics from their soapboxes just weeks before parliamentary elections.

A former captain in the Israeli Air Force, previously an ardent Zionist who lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, has been labelled a psychopath and denounced by many Israelis for the moral stand he has taken against the Israeli occupation.

Rebiya Kadeer has taken up a campaign for the rights of a people usually far from world headlines: the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority in China.

In an attempt to meet the development goal of universal access to primary education by 2015, Rwanda’s government has decided to reallocate a large part of its tertiary education budget to the primary education sector.

A draft pension bill has created great concern among workers in Malawi, with some hurriedly seeking early retirement before it will be passed. The bone of contention is a section pegging the retirement age for women at 55 and men at 60.

Civil society organisations warn that unless Zambia addresses its high poverty levels, the strides the country already made in achieving some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) may be reversed.