News headlines in June 2009, page 6

Unemployment among young South Africans is hovering at 30 percent, shooting up to over 60 percent for youths in their late teens and early twenties. But tertiary education and skills development seem not to be making much of a dent in what is now regarded as a crisis.

As the international war of words over nuclear programmes heats up, with North Korea threatening to strengthen its 'nuclear deterrence' against the United States, countries such as France find themselves in a stance that some analysts describe as ambiguous and hypocritical.

Capping a day of mixed signals, U.S. President Barack Obama said late Monday that he considered Sunday's ouster and exile of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to be 'not legal' and that Washington still considered him the legitimate president of the Central American country.

In another demonstration that it is impossible to hide anything in this socialist Caribbean island nation, the hottest video in Cuba today appears to show President Raúl Castro's determination to root out certain vices and disloyalties, regardless of the rank of the people involved.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling for an immediate investigation of Kenyan security officials it says were sent to protect civilians in the country’s northeastern Mandera district during the move to disarm the heavily militarised region in October 2008, but who beat and tortured those civilians instead, according to the report released Monday.

Sri Lankan journalists are laying aside their pens once again and bracing for renewed confrontation with President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government after the revival of the repressive Press Council and fresh attacks on the media.

Sunday’s coup d’etat shows that in Honduras, democracy - which was restored in 1982 - is still hemmed in by the military’s alliance with the economic and political powers-that-be, according to local analysts.

Six months into his new job as president of the United States, Barack Obama inspires more public confidence than any other political leader, said a new WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO) poll released here Monday.

While mass demonstrations in Iran are dwindling – with large gatherings and the opposition appearing largely paralysed by the authorities’ crackdown – the crisis there is causing a return to prominence for groups of Iranians living in the West: the exiles who have long advocated regime change in Iran, sometimes by armed means.

In this South Asian nation, people fondly remember a pop-singer who stole many hearts