News headlines in June 2009, page 14

In what appears increasingly to be an orchestrated campaign, right-wing Republicans and Israel-centred neo-conservatives are pulling out all the stops in depicting President Barack Obama as 'weak' on national security and promoting democracy abroad.

Environmental groups expressed little hope the participants at the 61st annual International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting, beginning Monday in Madeira, Portugal, would reach a compromise that would reduce the number of whales killed each year.

As Iraqis witness a spike in violence after a months-long relative lull, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has decided to put its security agreement with the U.S. to a public referendum, although the move appears to be only heightening a sense of uncertainty over the fate of the country.

Human rights and open government advocates were heartened by President Barack Obama’s pledge during his first week in office to create 'an unprecedented level of openness in government' and 'establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration'.

Environmental organisations in Chile plan to revive the anti-nuclear movement in the Southern Cone of South America, in response to vigorous lobbying by corporations and politicians in favour of nuclear energy in the region.

Forty-year-old Thelma Dube was this month told by her long-time employer to stay home. She will be called back to work when business picks up. Her husband got the same instruction, as did hundreds of other workers at a textile company in Zimbabwe’s second largest city.

Attempts to alleviate poverty and hunger and boost African economies are futile if the needs and potential of small-scale farmers in the region are ignored and the issue of trade barriers remains unaddressed.

On Jun. 25, 1996, a massive truck bomb exploded at a building in the Khobar Towers complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which housed U.S. Air Force personnel, killing 19 U.S. airmen and wounding 372.

A new report issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW) Monday calls for the Angolan government to end the arrest and torture of suspected rebels in the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda.

The streets of Tehran were a veritable war zone Saturday night, as angry voters took to the streets for the sixth day of protests this week against the Jun. 12 elections that re-instated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president.