News headlines in May 2010, page 13

Countries have paid too little attention to the importance of biodiversity, and as result, species and ecosystems are in sharp decline and the public does not understand the concept.

Ruler in hand, Fabiana draws lines with a pencil on orange cardboard, occasionally pushing her curly hair away from her eyes. Next to her, Fernanda fashions a colourful cardboard box, a prototype for what their cooperative will ultimately produce in large quantities.

When people talk about biodiversity loss, discussion often centres on the tragedy of animals like the tiger and the panda being in danger of extinction.

Talks between the government of President Raúl Castro and leaders of the Catholic Church in Cuba may alleviate internal tensions and lead to the release of political prisoners, although the dialogue should be extended to include other social sectors in the country, religious leaders and analysts told IPS.

'We feel defenceless, but we're going to return to San Juan Copala and accompany the family of our dead friend and colleague,' Jorge Albino, spokesperson for his autonomous village in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, told IPS Friday.

Mechanisation, increased use of fertilisers, and the planting of hybrid seeds have underpinned huge increases in the world's agricultural output over the past 40 years. Biotechnology is the latest gambit, but agronomists warn that climate change could wipe out that progress unless farmers begin combining these with indigenous knowledge.

On a fact-finding mission to Honduras this week, an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) delegation took aim at the dismissal of several judges who expressed their opposition to the Jun. 28 ouster of president Manuel Zelaya.

The international push behind Kenya’s controversial Anti-Counterfeit Act of 2008 dates back as far as October 2006 when the World Customs Organisation held its first intellectual property rights (IPRs) seminar in Kampala, the capital of neighbouring Uganda, focusing on East African governments’ enforcement of these rights.

The Tohono O'odham indigenous people are counting the days to the October expiry date of the permit granted to a toxic waste management company for a landfill dump in their territory, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora.

The charred skeletons of buildings in central Bangkok will be rebuilt after this week’s violence, but repairing the gaping fissures in Thai society - deepened further by the army crackdown on anti-government protesters - remains a far harder task.