News headlines in June 2010, page 6

With the force of an emergency law behind it, the Thai government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is tightening the screws on an opposition protest movement that, if mishandled, could extract a heavy political price.

'My daughter was brutally tortured, intimate parts of her body were beaten, her head was put in gas-filled bags and electric shocks were applied all over her body,' Vidalina Vera, the mother of Wilmary Brizuela, told the Venezuelan Attorney General's Office.

Indigenous elder Ernesto Noé, 69, is once again leading his people on a long march from Bolivia's Amazon jungle, to protest environmental damages caused by the oil industry and demand respect for native land rights.

Unregulated population growth along Uruguay's southern coast has hurt the Río de la Plata (River Plate) along an extensive stretch where the freshwater mixes with the Atlantic's salty seas, warn scientists.

The United Nations is sending a strong message to the world's corporate executives: abide by the rules of social and ethical conduct or risk having your firm named and shamed.

As heads of state from the Group of 20 (G20) most developed and economically powerful emerging nations meet in Toronto, Canada this weekend, some activists at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit are urging a more realistic look at the roots of the global economic crisis - and an end to the free-wheeling capitalist model embodied by Wall Street.

The Mexican army's participation in the counternarcotics war led by the government of conservative President Felipe Calderón has triggered a jump in violence in the areas where the troops are on the ground, according to an analysis by a U.S. statistics expert.

Africa's continued struggle for political and economic independence in many ways mirrors the very own struggles of communities in the U.S. that are now being tabled at the 2010 U.S. Social Forum in Detroit.

Lázara wakes up every morning in her home in New York, has a cup of coffee and, with the same passion with which she takes a stand for or against every cause, she turns on the radio, hoping to hear the news that she has been waiting for most of her life: the demise of former Cuban president Fidel Castro.

Hundreds of grassroots organisations came together at the U.S. Social Forum here to discuss strategies in the fight for immigration policy changes that would put an end to criminalisation and the militarisation of the border with Mexico.