News headlines in May 2010, page 28

The birth control pill, currently used by an estimated 100 million women worldwide, commemorated its 50th anniversary last week - but remains controversial in some quarters.

Under pressure from its European Union (EU) peers and confronted with the undeniable realities of the Greek financial collapse, the German government has finally given up its resistance to a multinational bailout programme for the Mediterranean EU member states.

South Africa is experiencing a shortage of over 80 different drugs in its public health sector, including flu vaccinations and medication for tuberculosis and high blood pressure. The severity of shortages varies from province to province and hospital to hospital, depending on the leadership and skills levels of management.

In little over a decade, Argentina has become one of the world leaders in production and export of films, mini-series, telenovelas (soap operas), entertainment programmes and commercials.

For a country that has had quite a few run-ins with global giants in the diplomatic arena, the last fortnight has witnessed somewhat of a turnaround for Sri Lanka.

Every day some 4,500 Filipinos leave their homeland in search of the proverbial green pastures. But some of them end up facing death instead.

Pentagon chief Robert Gates has called for a cutback of 15 billion dollars in wasteful military spending on contractors as well as government bureaucracy, or risk not being able to pay for its current force.

The majority of youth in U.S. cities are no longer white, but there is also a growing disparity in the educational background and incomes of those cities' populations, says a new report from the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

In Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in Latin America, Mexico's war on drugs has left at least 110 children dead in the past three years, and over 10,000 have lost parents.

The question of whether U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will move the court to the right or the left continued to be among the main points of contention among legal scholars Monday.