News headlines in June 2009, page 4

The sucre is the common currency that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has proposed for the countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of the Andes, an alliance comprised of Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, and now Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, write Joaquin Roy, ''Jean Monnet'' professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami, and Maria Lorca is Associate Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami.

The cobbler of Iraq, the man who threw his shoes at Bush, was sentenced to three years in prison. Shouldn't he be given an award instead? writes Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and journalist and author of ''The Open Veins of Latin America'', 'Memories of Fire'' and "Mirrors/An Almost Universal History".

While the first good news on the economic crisis is arriving from the US, Barack Obama continues to fight on all fronts, with rigour and courage. In contrast, in the European Union there is a marked lack of responsible leaders, writes Mario Soares, ex-president and ex-prime minister of Portugal.

Since a military junta seized control of Burma in 1988, the West's response has been to isolate it. The regime has refused to implement political and economic reforms. It's time for us to change our approach, writes Erik Solheim, Norwegian Minister of the Environment and International Development.

On March 4 the International Criminal Court indicted Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The very next day Bashir expelled international and national aid organisations from Darfur. And it has been four weeks since Arab leaders, knowing all of this, in their words, "stressed our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the ICC decision," writes Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her work to eliminate landmines and Chair of the Nobel Women's Initiative.

Before an end of the US embargo of Cuba became even remotely conceivable, certain major international developments had to take place: the profound political shift in Latin America, the moving election of the first black president of the United States (a man, moreover, committed to change in its widest sense), and the financial and economic cataclysm that has shaken the capitalist system to its roots, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

While the front pages report on the billions of dollars developed countries are pumping into their largest banks, and rising unemployment and lagging growth in the industrialised world, information on the recession in the other two thirds of the planet is scant and fragmentary, writes Mario Lubetkin, Director General of IPS news agency.

The new Shi'ite Personal Status Law recently passed in Afghanistan legalises rape within marriage and officially relegates women to second class citizens; it is a barefaced denial of human rights that needs to be condemned loudly, unequivocally and universally, writes Emma Bonino, vice-president of the Italian Senate.

Cubans are placing their hopes not in the G7 or G20 meetings, or in possible crisis-driven modifications of the global capitalist system, but rather in the social and economic changes announced by the government two years ago, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

As the global economic crisis continues to unfold, it is having severe effects on international trade. UNCTAD estimates that merchandise exports from developing countries could decline by 15.5% this year. At the regional level, we expect export growth to shrink by 16.8% in Asia, 12.5% in Africa, and 10% in Latin America, writes Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).