News headlines in June 2010, page 28

As Kyrgyzstan’s interim leaders struggle to cope with ethnic flare-ups within its borders they must also keep an eye out for trouble from a tough Central Asian neighbourhood and from big powers interested in the country’s strategic location.

P. Yuen Mach sat on the floor of her wooden home, her hands nervously twisting a stalk of lemongrass into fibrous strands.

Resentment here toward the foreign media had been simmering in the wake of the Thai government’s crackdown against protesters in May, but it nearly came to a boil when Thai panelists aired their frustrations recently about what they called western bias, misunderstandings of the Thai political culture and reporting that tried to fit events into a bad-versus-evil contest.

In a vast field, a sinewy, dark-skinned man bends at the waist, slicing stalks of wheat with a small machete. In a village, a mother gently places her infant son, slung in a piece of blue fabric, onto a vegetable scale housed in a makeshift clinic.

In a country where many poor children dream of 'making it big' through football or modeling, Brazilian football stars Leonardo and Raí could have simply basked in their fame. But they decided instead to combine sport with education, art and skills training.

Backtracking by international donors in funding the fight against HIV/AIDS risks widening the treatment gap in Africa, undermining years of positive achievements in the field, warns a new Medecins Sans Frontieres report. And many more unnecessary HIV-related deaths will be caused by these shifts in international donor funding

African medical experts have realised they need to make a much bigger effort to educate rural communities if they want to effectively contain the continent’s tuberculosis (TB) epidemic.

As it took root in the rice fields across Asia, it was hailed as the solution to the hunger afflicting millions of people in the region. But four decades on, the much vaunted Green Revolution appears to have reached its limits, unable to meet new demands, to feed new mouths.

One of Cuba's most prominent moderate dissidents, historian Manuel Cuesta Morúa, says the recent talks between Catholic Church leaders and the government of Raúl Castro mark the start of a 'new time' for the country.

An agreement reached at an international conference last week pledged over four billion dollars to the U.N.'s effort to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that come from deforestation and forest degradation. But a study published Friday questions what impact that effort, called REDD, can have.