News headlines in June 2010, page 29

With less than six months before Mexico hosts the next global climate change summit, Mexican environmental organisations hosting the parallel civil society forum are divided on how to carry it out -- which some fear could ultimately weaken their role at the negotiating table.

If, as expected, the U.N. Security Council remains politically impotent and refuses to penalise Israel for the killings of nine pro-Palestinian civilians on a ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, what is the next course of action?

Within three days of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Monday, the pro-Israel lobby in Brussels was already seeking to deflect attention from the killing of nine peace activists in international waters.

In a country like China, that regularly exorcises the ghosts of the past, few understand the importance of oral history better than Chinese writer Xinran.

The Papagayo river in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero is still flowing, and local communities opposed to construction of a massive hydroelectric dam are making every effort to keep things that way, as reflected in a documentary about their struggle.

Relations between China and Burma have been shaky of late — due in large part to border skirmishes in Burma that have frustrated Beijing. But one would not know it from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s state visit, which ended today.

Although the issue of an early harvest for least developed countries (LDCs) has been raised time and again, there remains 'a certain reluctance' to prioritise it in the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Round of trade talks, according to South African trade minister Dr Rob Davies.

When Abdulkhaliq Mohammed arrived in Bahrain as a contract labourer 20 years ago, the first thing he did on setting foot in the oil-rich Gulf state was to hand his passport over to his employer.

What was already an open secret, detentions in secret prisons in the fight against terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., has been clearly documented in a report on these abuses that was discussed Thursday by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Floribert Chebeya, executive secretary of human rights group Voice of the Voiceless, was discovered dead in his car early in the morning of Jun. 2. Numerous journalists and human right activists have been killed in suspicious circumstances in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the past five years.