News headlines in June 2010, page 11

Suffering through the atrocities of war affects people in different ways. Some become crippled by anger, others by fear. Some become violent and want only revenge. And some, like Rose Mapendo, an inspiring survivor of the war and ethnic cleansing in the Democratic Republic of Congo, come out with a strong commitment to work for peace and reconciliation.

A year and a half into the presidency of Barack Obama, any hopes that he would usher in a dramatic rethinking of U.S. foreign policy have been more or less definitively dashed.

The Canadian government has quietly been conducting an international criminal probe of the actions of Syrian and U.S. authorities in the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was arrested in 2002 by U.S. officials and then rendered to a Syrian jail where he was held incommunicado and tortured for 10 months before being released without charge, it was revealed Monday.

Masako Suzuki, 50, has been fighting tooth and nail for the last six years just to gain equal custody of her son, who lives with her estranged husband.

An Indian textile engineer and entrepreneur called Raj Rajendran visited Rwanda in 1999. He was tasked to close down an unviable textile factory following the civil war. But he discovered propitious agro-climatic conditions, particularly volcanic soil -- ideal for the rearing of silk worms to produce raw silk.

In the wake of Monday's Supreme Court decision upholding a law making it a crime to provide any 'material support' to an organisation designated as a 'terrorist' by the U.S. government, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter charged that the law 'actually threatens our work and the work of many other peacemaking organisations that must interact directly with groups that have engaged in violence'.

Jerry Torres, CEO of Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions, has a motto: 'For Torres, failure is not an option.' A former member of the Green Berets, one of the elite U.S. Army Special Forces, he was awarded 'Executive of the Year' at the seventh annual 'Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards' in November 2009.

China's central bank announced Saturday that it would give the Chinese Yuan (RMB) flexibility to gradually rise in value against the U.S. dollar in a move that was welcomed by Washington and designed to appease global leaders at this weekend's G20 meeting in Toronto.

Worrying trends continue to plague Cambodia and provide considerable concern for the future despite the gains it has reportedly made in combating human trafficking.

Some of the world's weakest states are becoming ever more fragile, according to the 2010 edition of the annual 'Failed States Index' (FSI) released here Monday by Foreign Policy magazine and the independent Fund for Peace (FFP).