News headlines in May 2010, page 10

Almost a year after a review mission of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) found Zimbabwe guilty of 'serious non-compliance' with the scheme’s minimum criteria on conflict diamonds, the militarisation of the southern African country’s diamond mining operations continues.

Prominent Jewish intellectuals living in Europe have begun denouncing the Israeli policy of allowing settlements to come up on Palestinian territories as 'morally and politically wrong.’’

Realising that achieving water security in the future is not an option but a necessity, oil-rich Gulf countries are striving to find new environment-friendly and more economical ways of producing freshwater.

Civil society organisations called for more funds, less bureaucracy and greater decision-making power, at the opening of the Fourth Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly Monday in this Uruguayan resort town.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama announced on Monday that he would renege on his campaign promise to renegotiate the move of a controversial U.S. airbase off the island of Okinawa.

With only five years left to meet the Millennium Development Goals' 2015 deadline for reducing child mortality, progress toward that goal may be coming faster than was previously thought.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal's team once talked openly about the need to remove Ahmed Wali Karzai, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother and the most powerful man in Kandahar, from power.

Tensions between the European Union and Africa have once again erupted, with Namibia accusing the Brussels elite of resorting to bullying tactics in trade negotiations.

First Angola, and now Brazil, Portugal's two largest former colonial possessions, are extending a helping hand to the battered Portuguese economy.

The Bolivian government negotiated with native groups to head off major marches and roadblocks aimed at demanding protection of indigenous land rights and conservation of the environment in their territories.