News headlines in March 2011, page 40

Grannies are indispensable in South Africa. They may have been hoping for a restful old age, but the AIDS epidemic has seen them taking on motherhood for a second time, caring for grandchildren whose parents have died of the disease.

The peace imposed on the more than 200,000 people living in the Complexo do Alemão group of favelas in Rio de Janeiro by Brazil's military police is helping to pave the way for the recognition of basic human rights.

As Southern Africa prepares itself for another year of economic partnership agreement (EPA) negotiations with the European Union, trade analysts say any deal should be about more than just liberalised trade.

Access to affordable medicine for millions of people in the South could be at risk if the production and distribution of generic medicine from India is restricted. Campaigners say both Kenyan legislation and a European Union-India trade agreement to be concluded this year will block access to affordable drugs.

Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe are poised to sign a memorandum of understanding to improve power generation along the length of the Zambezi River.

The walls outside the Al-Jalah Hospital in downtown Bengazi are covered with posters of missing persons, mostly teenagers and young men who disappeared after the protests began. Inside, hundreds of gunshot victims recover from the street battle between Muammar Gaddafi's forces and Benghazi's citizens.

'She was just skin and bones, even crying seemed a huge effort,' Hajiani says of one-year-old Samreen Tauqir, when she saw her for the first time two months ago.

Sultan Quyun, 58, longs for the day when the decades-long conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces will come to an end. For her, the end of violence does not just hold the promise of a possible resolution of the Kurdish issue in the country, but would bring about, she hopes, a much-awaited reunion with her son.

Amid growing pressure on President Barack Obama to intervene more forcefully in Libya, the White House Tuesday sharply rebutted charges by Yemen's president that Washington is conspiring against his government and other Arab regimes.

J Street, the Washington-based 'Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace' advocacy group, drew a large crowd to its annual conference this year despite criticism over its controversial calls for the Barack Obama administration not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.