News headlines in June 2009, page 11

While worldwide production of heroin and cocaine appears to be slowing, there has been an increase in the use of synthetic drugs, especially in the Middle East, according to the latest report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released Wednesday.

An international conference on the global financial crisis - hosted by the United Nations - is being marginalised by Western countries which have refused to send any of their political leaders to the meeting.

After informing the Syrian embassy in Washington on Tuesday night, the U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday that President Barack Obama will be sending an ambassador to Damascus for the first time since 2005.

With no formal education, Mama Ibeji may not be tracking the global economic crisis in the newspapers. But from her little roadside restaurant in Makoko, a Lagos suburb, she can tell that all is not well with the Nigerian economy.

Veteran television reporter Rolando Santiz was on his way to downtown Guatemala City on Apr. 1 when two gunmen on a motorcycle drove up alongside his car and killed him in a rain of gunfire. The photographer driving with him was wounded but miraculously survived.

A South African capture team has almost completed the translocation of a herd of elephants from the Phirilongwe forest reserve located in a communal management area in southern Malawi.

Six of the eight Gambian Press Union (GPU) officials and journalists arrested last week have now been freed on bail. The journalists still face serious charges including 'conspiracy to publish with seditious intention'.

As India follows up on the historic civilian nuclear agreement it signed last year with the United States by drawing up hard commercial deals, opposition to ‘nuclearism’ is building up among activist groups.

A paralysing equation has long bedevilled would-be Middle East peacemakers: either, go directly to negotiating the kernel issues of the Israel-Palestine conflict - borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem - and leave, in the context of a full peace, the thorny question of Israeli settlements in the West Bank to fall naturally into place. Or, tackle the settlements head-on, thereby opening the way for a peace drive.

As United Nations members gather for talks on how best to end the global financial crisis, anti-poverty campaigners fear that instead of addressing poverty in the developing world, governments will work to prop up financial structures.