News headlines in October 2010, page 5

Cuban rock 'n' roll, once an underground movement, is being mapped for inclusion in an exhaustive compendium of Latin American rock -- from the music itself to its transformation into a lifestyle. The project's promoters say the Cuban rock music 'map' will serve as a guide, a way to open doors, and as a historical record of a musical genre imported and kept for decades deep in the cultural underground.

The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) Friday welcomed the historic decision by the Human Rights Council to recognise water and sanitation as basic human rights. Anders Berntell, Executive Director of SIWI described the decision as 'an important step in the work to secure access to drinking water and sanitation for all.' He added that SIWI has actively supported global advocacy efforts to recognise this human right.

Rights activists have called for nascent abolitionist movements of the Middle East and North Africa to coordinate their efforts to press Arab regimes to end capital punishment. 'Civil society managed to put abolition on the agenda in many Arab countries,' says Mervat Reshmawy, a human rights consultant. 'Unfortunately, abolitionist movements in the region are still divided over whether to demand a moratorium (on executions), a reduction in the number of capital crimes, or full abolition.'

It was meant as an appeal to generous souls, but a suggestion for a one-time tax to help raise funds for Pakistan's millions of flood victims has instead reminded many Pakistanis of their country's faulty tax system. Indeed, many are peeved by President Asif Ali Zardari's proposal for a tax to be imposed on Pakistan's 'well-off' and 'people of means', with several like 50-something accountant Munaf Lakda downright seething.

The promise of education for all by 2015 made 10 years ago at the World Education Forum risks not to be kept without the recruitment of sufficient numbers of well-trained and professionally motivated teachers, the heads of four major UN agencies said. International Labour Organization (ILO) Director-General Juan Somavia, U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark, U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General Irina Bokova and U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Anthony Lake issued the joint statement on World Teachers' Day.

Financial remittances to the Central Asian Republics by millions of both undocumented and legal migrants working in Russia have increased substantially, labour experts say.

Aid organisations say a small handheld computer will allow them to more rapidly assess where food aid is needed most urgently. As a result, fewer Burundians will suffer hunger this year. Fifteen years of civil war, combined with extreme poverty, a fragile political process and recurrent natural disasters like floods and droughts, have caused a drastic increase in poverty and hunger in the central African nation.

The 11.7 billion dollars pledged Tuesday to replenish the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the coming three years falls significantly short of the 20 billion dollars hoped for, threatening to undo the progress made in the fight against these diseases - the three largest infectious killers in the world.

Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina last Sunday have passed without changing much. Bosnian voters had a difficult political scene to tackle. Bosnia's political system arising from the Dayton agreement of 1995 is the most complicated in Europe, if not the world. It maintains strong entities, namely the almost exclusively Serbian Republica Serpska (RS) and the Bosniak-Croat Federation.

Various countries in East Africa are making gradual progress in moving from a solely carbon-based electricity network to a cleaner power grid. 'We are not there yet, but countries are starting to take the bull by the horns,' said Mark Hankins. As a renewable energy consultant he has worked in the field of rural electrification and renewable energy in East and Southern Africa for the past two decades.