News stories by Matthew Berger, page 7

Defending human rights in Colombia — never an especially safe endeavour — has become even more dangerous lately, several NGO leaders and Colombian human rights defenders testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

On Sep. 24, a beachgoer near Swansea, Wales reported a piece of military equipment washed up on the shore. Three days later, the two members of the team that had showed up to dispose of the shell developed symptoms compatible with mustard gas — a chemical warfare agent used in the two world wars and other conflicts.

Reports of a large infrastructure and minerals agreement between Guinea and Chinese investors this week have turned a harsh spotlight on the human rights and geopolitical stakes of the scramble for Africa's natural wealth.

U.N.-supported military operations in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have had an 'unacceptable' cost for the civilian population, said a coalition of rights groups Tuesday.

Governments and interest groups around the world followed the U.S. House of Representatives' vote Friday on the first U.S. policy to limit the country's greenhouse gas emissions. They were especially interested in Europe, where a system similar to the bill's cap-and-trade scheme already exists and where EU countries agreed last December to tough emissions targets.

It is too optimistic to say the United States is headed for a Japan-style recession, according to Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.

In 1994, hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbours, friends, and family members across Rwanda. Nine years later the killers came home from prison to live side by side again with their victims.

As the slew of U.S. officials visiting Beijing continued with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s visit this past weekend, it is clear the Barack Obama administration is taking a much more active approach to relations with China than in years past. This shift is probably most clear, and most crucial, in the field of climate change.

Bruce Brown died of cancer at age 18. Some of Marilyn Kissinger’s other friends lived into their early and late twenties, dying in the late 1960s. Most had died by the late 1980s.

In the wake of the California Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8, which eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry, a surprising scapegoat and potential savior for opponents of the proposition has emerged in the California ballot initiative process.