News headlines in March 2011, page 5

The 53-member Asian Group, one of the largest regional groups in the world body, is expected to endorse the final candidates for two key positions in the organisation: the president of the next General Assembly sessions, beginning in September, and the secretary-general of the United Nations for the next five years, beginning in January 2012.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that it would not hear an appeal by death row inmate Troy Davis, in what could be the end of the legal road for the Georgia prisoner whose case has garnered international support.

An ardent listener to the radio, small-scale cotton farmer Mercy Kaduya from Chikhwawa in Nsanje in southern Malawi has just heard an item during the international news segment that cotton prices have hit a record high on the international market.

We are far from the Hippocratic oath in world affairs. What is happening now in Libya is intervention supporting one side against the other. This is normally called war, writes Johan Galtung, Rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University and author of "A Theory of Conflict" and "A Theory of Development".

When the trunks of the trees move with every step you take, you know you are in a swamp. This is what happens when you walk over the seemingly firm and vegetation-covered ground over what was once a pit used to dump oil sludge in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest.

Salvadorans who were transferred to Honduran jurisdiction following an international court decision in 1992, which settled a long-running border dispute between the two countries, are still calling for implementation of social and economic development projects needed to conquer poverty.

Some 14 months after Haiti's earthquake, activists say there is an ongoing epidemic of rape and gender-based violence (GBV) in the country's more than 1,000 squalid displaced persons camps, where nearly a million people are still awaiting permanent housing.

A new week, a new campaign for Ankara's diplomacy. After a victorious arm-twisting on Saturday with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to divert the leadership of the aerial war against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from France to NATO, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned his attention to trouble closer to home, Syria.

In spite of its recent successes, Hezbollah seems to be experiencing increasing difficulty in harmonizing the interests of its Shiite constituency and those of its Iranian patrons as it delves into the chaos of Lebanese politics.

The newly elected chair of the Overseas Countries and Territories Association (OCTA), Montserrat's Chief Minister Reuben Meade, wants 'trade rather than aid' to form the basis of the future relationship between Europe and its colonies around the world.