News headlines in June 2010, page 19

Adverse climatic conditions and weather-related disasters are damaging crops in El Salvador and neighbouring countries in Central America, aggravating the food vulnerability that the region already faces.

They were about 1,000 when they began, but that number quickly dwindled to some 400. Now the women working at Try Arm are down to 30, yet those running the cooperative that makes women’s undergarments are determined to succeed.

The quest for justice for a Canadian who was mistakenly tagged as a terrorist by U.S. authorities and shipped off to a Syrian prison for close to a year of abuse came to an abrupt halt Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case.

Last winter's big snowfall and cold temperatures in the eastern United States and Europe were likely caused by the loss of Arctic sea ice, researchers concluded at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference in Norway last week.

A Malaysian youth is languishing in death row awaiting hanging after Singapore’s judiciary found him guilty of possessing heroin weighing 47 grams, lawyers fighting to save him tell IPS.

A water-sharing treaty among five upstream Nile Basin countries - to the exclusion of Egypt and Sudan - has reignited the longstanding dispute over water distribution. Local experts, however, say the agreement will not jeopardise Egypt's historical share of Nile water.

The Maldives Islands, fast gaining a reputation for ‘walking the talk’ as it raises its tiny island voice in the climate change discourse, has launched an action plan to phase out hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) by 2020, or 10 years ahead of other countries and the target set by an international agreement known as the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

The World Cup is wreaking havoc with a key millennium development goal in South Africa: as the football tournament hit its stride, not a single child across the nation attended school.

Earlier this spring, many here in Washington were hopeful that Chinese president Hu Jintao's attendance at the Nuclear Security Summit, the U.S. Treasury Department's decision to hold off on naming China as a 'currency manipulator', and China's support of U.N. sanctions against Iran all pointed to a thaw in the cool relationship between the Barack Obama White House and Beijing.

The timing of the publication of a major New York Times story on the vast untapped mineral wealth that lies beneath Afghanistan's soil is raising major questions about the intent of the Pentagon, which released the information.