News headlines in May 2010, page 3

Incorporating young people into the task of fostering understanding between people of various cultural and religious backgrounds is one of the four priority areas of the Alliance of Civilisations.

Up until Saturday the Attabad Lake in northern Pakistan had been rising one metre every day and was thus on the verge of breaking its banks, observed Lieutenant General Nadeem Ahmed, chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

The first Review Conference of the International Criminal Court will open in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, on May 31. The conference is the first opportunity to propose amendments to the treaty that established the ICC, the Rome Statute, and to assess the implementation and impact of the ICC.

Life can be hard working in these tunnels, and it is always at risk. But many have no choice but to work in them, particularly since mid-2007, when Israel and Egypt, with the help of the international community, imposed a siege of staggering severity on the 1.5 million humans in the Gaza Strip.

While there was no question that the visual depictions of the Prophet Mohammad on Facebook hit a raw nerve among devout Muslims all over the world, the debate here in Pakistan has been all about whether the government should be the one making choices for its Internet users.

With monsoon rains beginning to sweep across mainland south-east Asia, mobile phones are being put to further use as part of a plan to protect communities living on the banks of the Mekong River from flash floods.

With the welcome end to wars in the upper reaches of the Okavango River, has come new pressures for development and the risk of unwelcome changes to the health of the river. A joint commission to manage the basin is developing tools to avoid this.

Although the Barack Obama administration continued to dismiss the May 17 Iranian fuel swap agreement Friday, there are indications that Iran's move has shaken the agreement among U.N. Security Council members on sanctions, and is bringing Russian diplomatic pressure on the United States to participate in new talks with Iran on the swap arrangement - something the administration clearly wished to avoid.

Aston Kirui’s worst experience with wheat stem rust was in 2009 when he lost most of his crop. The wheat farmer from Katakala village in Narok, west of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, is more fortunate this year as the disease has not struck. But his neighbour is not so lucky.

The road to a nuclear weapons-free world is apparently paved with good intentions - but littered with plenty of platitudes and empty promises.