News headlines in July 2009, page 20

On Tuesday, the first full day of questions from members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee considering the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, was remarkable mainly for the softball questions asked by her Democratic supporters and the snarky, 'gotcha' questions posed by her Republican opponents.

Pastor Rick Warren would never be described as laid back. However, since delivering the invocation at President Barack Obama's inauguration in late January, he's been somewhat on the down low.

At a recent conference in Miami organised by Offshore Alert, a specialised media organisation focused on financial crime, IPS correspondent Lucy Komisar sat down with veteran investigator Bob Roach to discuss the hurdles facing regulators trying to crack down on tax havens, which cost the U.S. alone an estimated 100 billion dollars annually.

The Sri Lankan government wants the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to scale down its operations in the country, but is sparing other international nongovernmental organisations amid questions over the post-war role for humanitarian workers.

What's a name, what's in a road name? History, ideology, nationalism.

The UN Security Council has warned that the existence of a large Israeli-run espionage network in Lebanon could threaten a fragile peace established between the two countries following the end of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.

A year ago Monday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy launched the Union for the Mediterranean, or Euromed, a grouping of European Union nations plus 16 non- EU Mediterranean states. Since then, critics say, the initiative has made little tangible progress.

In 2007, the French corruption watchdog Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (known by its French acronym CCFD) issued a first report on the colossal sums stolen by corrupt heads of states and hidden in mostly Western secret bank accounts. Figures are hard to come by, given the secrecy that shrouds such looting of public funds.

She has had to change her name, sever links with her family and boyfriend, and even move cities because of male stalkers in the Bahraini capital. But no 'sacrifice' is too much in the pursuit of her dream for Tufaha, just 24.

Very little is known about North Korean society considering the country is so isolated the outside world. Those who flee the country refrain from speaking out, fearing persecution against them or their families. IPS’s Zoltán Dujisin caught up with Kim Young Seong, a North Korean defector, who gave a rare insight into North Korean society. The following are extracts from the interview.