News headlines in June 2010, page 23

Aid to poor countries should be tailored more towards benefiting European firms, a top-level Brussels official has recommended.

Putting together the complex puzzle of the different kinds of provincial, municipal and indigenous autonomy in Bolivia will be a delicate task that will have to overcome struggles over funds, jurisdiction and ideology, said analysts consulted by IPS.

The administration of President Barack Obama is considering using Afghanistan's U.S.-run Bagram Air Base prison to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects captured far from a battlefield and who have not been charged with a crime - without any judicial oversight.

'Sometimes I feel sad when things don't go ahead as well as I would like them to, but we have no alternative but to keep on trying,' says Lourdes Almada, a Mexican sociologist and activist for children's rights, as she drives her pickup truck in Ciudad Juárez.

Human rights groups are turning to an obscure government agency to investigate allegations that medical professionals on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped the agency to perform experiments on detainees in U.S. custody following the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, in an effort to make 'enhanced interrogation techniques' more efficient and provide them with legal cover.

Expectations are high for Japan’s new prime minister, Naoto Kan, who has taken over the reins of a country saddled with massive public debt and a domestic furore over the failure of the former head of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and newly resigned premier Yukio Hatoyama to deliver on his campaign pledge to move the controversial U.S. military base out of the southern island of Okinawa.

As the first Review Conference of the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court takes stock of the ICC's achievements and considers amendments to strengthen the pursuit of justice around the world, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize is one of its strongest defenders.

Hanging from a rafter in Jane Wanjiku’s home is a calendar bearing the image of the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. It's an illustration of how the ICC has seized the imagination of ill-treated people around the world.

She spends so much time immersed in water as if she were a mermaid. But Jariya Sakayaroj looks like she does not mind even if she ends up developing scales.

While top U.S. officials touted the U.N. Security Council's approval Wednesday of a new sanctions resolution against Iran as a major diplomatic breakthrough, most nuclear and Iran specialists say it is unlikely to be effective and could prove counterproductive.