News headlines in May 2009

Namibia will sign an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) when the outstanding contentious issues have been resolved through new wording in the texts of the interim EPA, says the country’s trade and industry minister Hage Geingob.

Millions of people will soon have to leave their homeland as a result of global warming, says a report on environmental refugees by the Italian environmental association Legambiente. Half of them will move due to natural catastrophes, the rest will be hit by desertification and rising sea levels.

The inevitable has happened. Simmering tensions between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have left six Palestinians dead, in the bloodiest confrontation between the two groups since Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza in June 2007.

After years of negotiations on joining the WTO, Russia is still far from meeting the requirements set forth by the organisation.

Jaragua National Park, famous for housing the world’s tiniest reptile, will itself be in danger if the green light is given to mega-hotel projects instead of ecotourism and sustainable development initiatives, say Dominican ecologists.

In the face of an economic system which seems to be premised on environmental harm and profit-driven growth, a handful of communities across the U.S. and the globe have begun experimenting with alternative forms of local currency as a pathway to sustainability.

The Council of Europe has warned in a report that attacks and political racism directed against Jews, Roma and Hungarian minorities have increased since the far-right Slovak National Party joined the government in 2006.

As night falls over Egypt’s capital, youth gather along the banks of the Nile where a carnivalesque atmosphere prevails.

Canada and the United States are on different wavelengths when it comes to a shared and increasingly hardening of what had been a sleepy border within North America.

Visibly indignant, former Colombian president César Gaviria (1990-1994) denounced this week what he called an 'appalling' article in a draft political reform law currently under debate in Congress.