News headlines in June 2010, page 9

While drug use has largely stabilised in industrial countries, there are signs that it may be on the rise in developing countries, says a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the impact of a rise in drug abuse could cause a lot more damage in developing countries than it has for their richer counterparts.

Despite President Barack Obama's denial that his decision to fire Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan and replace him with Gen. David Petraeus signified any differences with McChrystal over war strategy, the decision obviously reflects a desire by Obama to find a way out of a deepening policy crisis in Afghanistan.

Delays in construction to prepare for the 2014 football World Cup, to be hosted by Brazil, bring to mind the budget overruns and the secretive bidding process ahead of the Pan-American Games held in Rio de Janeiro in 2007.

The majority of people surveyed in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Nicaragua are in favour of legalising therapeutic abortion, but not all forms of elective abortion, according to a study by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO).

Every day, as many as 260 trucks filled with supplies for U.S. troops - from muffins to fuel to armoured tanks - are driven from the Pakistani port of Karachi across the Khyber pass into Afghanistan.

When Samuel Mwangi’s one-year-old HIV-positive son died five years ago, he thought the death of his child also meant the death of his family’s legacy. 'I wept. And to the bottom of my heart, I knew that that was the end of my generation,' said HIV-positive Mwangi.

Despite the ongoing financial crisis, global poverty rates are expected to fall by half in the next five years compared to 1990, according to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Report 2010 launched on Wednesday by Secretary-General Ban Ki- Moon.

They are no longer simply the girlfriends of gang members. Women have increasingly become members themselves of Brazil's youth gangs over the past decade -- though they have yet to reach the leadership positions of their male colleagues.

The Culion island, in the western Philippines, is increasingly becoming a magnet for tourists drawn to its corals in the shallow waters close to its shore, its deep green hills and its ancient Spanish fort.

Questions are being asked about whether the Group of Eight invitation to seven African states to attend its summit in Ontario, Canada, reflects its concern about the litany of unmet promises dating from its 2005 Gleneagles meeting -- or whether it merely amounts to another bout of window-dressing.