Green Party of Tennessee

In what promises to be a contentious, high-profile series of debates, the forces of environmental protection will be lining up against those of the electric power industry over the future status of coal-ash.

Ramaih Sathdiyapillai has had enough of life on the run. A native of Kilinochchi district – which was until not too long ago the stronghold of the separatist Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka's north – she bore the brunt of the war along with tens of thousands of others.

Good news has become harder to come by these days in Afghanistan, especially as the war-ravaged country gears up for the parliamentary election scheduled on Sep. 18.

Franklin Brito, who held several long hunger strikes since 2004 to defend ownership of his farm, became the first Venezuelan to fast to the death.

Among its unstable and conflict-ridden neighbours, Rwanda stands out. It has been pegged as a model of development and one of Africa's success stories: Since the 1990's, when a civil war ravaged the country, average incomes have doubled, its people have become healthier and less hungry and it has the highest proportion of women parliamentarians worldwide. Yet, maintaining this stability is a government accused of muzzling its opponents and committing human rights abuses.

In cities across Africa, being an entrepreneur requires no office, business card or investors. All it takes is a cell phone, according to Adele Botha, a researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa.

Environmentalists are alarmed: fires have destroyed close to 100,000 hectares of forest in Portugal this summer, releasing one million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Worst of all, the forests are losing their ability to absorb carbon.

The heat in the upper six miles of the earth's crust contains 50,000 times as much energy as found in all the world's oil and gas reserves combined. Despite this abundance, only 10,700 megawatts of geothermal electricity generating capacity have been harnessed worldwide.

Two of the nation's most influential human rights organisations have filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to carry out "targeted killings" of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.

Military auditors failed to complete an audit of the business systems of an Ohio- based company - Mission Essential Personnel - even though it had billed for one billion dollars worth of work largely in Afghanistan over the last four years.

With its thick forest cover and abundant wildlife, the Dawna mountain range in south-eastern Burma is coming in the way of a flagship highway project being pushed by one of Asia's premier financiers of roads.

Thousands of Israelis have protested in a central park here demanding that their government revoke its decision to deport 400 children of migrant workers.

An Egyptian military court handed down sentences Monday in the trial of eight civilian factory workers who led a protest against deteriorating safety conditions in an army-owned factory. Rights groups say the trial should never have taken place.

Rasik Rasheed's (not his real name) hefty Internet bills hardly bother his family. Cooped up at home due to curfews and strikes here for nearly three months now, youngsters like him have been busy not just with their studies but with waging what they call the Kashmir struggle on the Internet.

Since their first child was born 16 years ago, Hiroyuki Ozaki has taken care of the household, relinquishing his traditional role as the main breadwinner while his wife held on to her career in the travel industry.

President Barack Obama will try this week to underline his progress in extricating the United States from the morass his predecessor's "global war on terror" in the Greater Middle East.

While efforts get underway to try to rescue the 33 miners who are trapped 700 metres underground in a mine in northern Chile, trade unions are calling on the country's political leaders to tackle the underlying problems of worker safety.

South America's Mercosur trade bloc is becoming established as the top world producer of beef, with 40 percent of the international market. But while in Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay production and exports are growing, Argentina, the home of the legendary "asado" barbecue, is falling behind.

Though it may look like a tea bag, straining water through this recently developed filter could provide a cheap, easily replenished source of water for those who need it most.

Coordinated conservation measures to arrest the steep decline of stocks of Nile perch in Lake Victoria are showing encouraging results - for fish, if not for fishing communities around the lake.