News headlines in July 2011

'The Whistle Blower', a feature film inspired by actual events that occurred in 1999, follows the story of Kathy Bolkovac (Academy Award-winner Rachel Weisz), a U.S. police officer who takes a job working as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia.

The fundamentalist Ennahda party seems poised to take advantage of a chaotic situation ahead of general elections in Tunisia. Ennahda and other Islamist parties are taking advantage of the Aug. 2 deadline for registration for elections coinciding with the start of the holy month of Ramadan, when there is better attendance at mosques.

Protesters from several European Union cities have begun to follow the example of hundreds of demonstrators from Spain who are marching from Madrid to Brussels, the bloc's de facto capital, in a growing protest against the effects of the economic crisis and the fiscal adjustment policies adopted to combat it.

As record-breaking temperature highs and rapidly melting ice caps fuel fears about impending 'water wars', some experts in Washington say that the threat of full-blown conflict is exaggerated, adding that robust institutions and solid treaties could transform water crises into international cooperation.

'It wasn't easy to convince people that growing fish in the desert makes sense,' reminisces marine biologist Samuel Appelbaum, peering through the opaque water where thousands of barramundi are being harvested.

For the second time in a little over a month, Wilfredo, a 26-year-old Salvadoran construction worker, is trying to make it into the United States without papers to join his sister in Arlington, Texas.

The new president of Peru, retired lieutenant colonel Ollanta Humala, promised to make the fight against poverty and marginalisation the top priority of his administration. But his inaugural address was short on specifics, according to activists and analysts.

Unless Malawi’s government does something to find solutions to its economic and governance problems, the country will see more nationwide protests like the ones last week where 18 people were killed and 275 arrested, analysts say.

Governments, especially in Africa, need to have strong accountability measures in place in order to effectively reach women in rural areas through gender responsive budgeting.

Opposition members of parliament in Burkina Faso have called on France to open its archives to look for evidence of involvement of the French secret services in the 1987 death of Thomas Sankara.