News headlines in May 2010, page 35

The governments of the South American Union of Nations (UNASUR) confirmed their refusal to recognise the government of Honduras and named former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) as the regional bloc's first secretary general Tuesday.

Despite spending more than half a billion dollars over the last quarter century, U.S. government broadcasts to Cuba have gained only a tiny audience and have had virtually no effect on the island's politics, according to a new report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

As oil seeps into the environmentally and economically critical Gulf of Mexico following an explosion on a rig there two weeks ago, some groups are saying this catastrophe should mark the end of offshore drilling for oil - and be a 'clarion call' for moving away from fossil fuels.

As Cuba feels the impact of a drought that is affecting the entire Caribbean region, authorities have stepped up calls for water savings in households and the public sector.

Advocates for comprehensive immigration reform are working against time to transform a groundswell of popular support into concrete legislation that the U.S. Congress can pass this year.

Seventeen-year-old Miriam Toaquiza is the only occupant of the teenage mothers' ward in the public hospital in this Andean city. Beside her in the bed is Jennifer, her newborn baby.

Despite the Indian government’s pledge to extend assistance, legal or otherwise, to the 17 Indian migrant workers currently on death row in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), human rights advocates have decried its alleged insensitivity to the prisoners’ plight.

'Loss of freedom should not mean loss of fundamental rights,' Diana Sánchez, a lawyer with the Political Prisoners Solidarity Committee (CSPP), told IPS. 'But in Colombia prisoners are punished twice over: with a prison sentence, and with restrictions on their other rights.'

Six years after the ruling Justice and Development Party government declared ‘zero tolerance’ for torture, the practice prevails in Turkey, human rights monitors in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeastern region say.

There's a Jerusalem saying that the city wears too many hats -- Jewish hats, Muslim hats, Christian hats -- so it's difficult to get at its brain.