News headlines in July 2011, page 15

In a blow to those calling for a new constitution to be drawn up before elections are held, Egypt's ruling military council last week reiterated its intention to hold parliamentary polls later this year.

'I have never seen anything like it. Many mothers have lost three or four children. It's a tragedy out here,' Austin Kennan, regional director for the Horn of Africa for Concern Worldwide, told IPS from within the crisis zone.

With nearly 40 percent of the world's population lacking adequate sanitation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced an initiative Tuesday to invest 42 million dollars in new grants to help 'reinvent the toilet'.

Chess player Roberto Galván, 33, was detained Jan. 25 by the police in the northeast Mexican state of Nuevo León as he sat on a bench in the central square of General Terán, a town 100 km from Monterrey. No one has seen him since.

A video showing a group of 16 Pakistani policemen, hands tied behind their backs, being executed by Taliban gunmen in the Dir district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is only the latest in a series showing brutal acts designed to strike terror in the areas bordering Afghanistan.

Ethel James cannot wait for the gravity-fed water scheme in her area to be fixed so that she and the other women in her village will no longer have to wake up before dawn everyday to queue for water.

In the midst of heated debate with agribusiness, the Bolivian government has launched an agricultural production model aimed at boosting food sovereignty by supporting small farmers, in order to generate surpluses to cushion the swings in international food prices.

Defence analysts in Pakistan believe that foregoing 800 million US dollars worth of aid may be a fair bargain for ridding this country of a over a hundred ‘military trainers’ who were suspected of being spies.

Laurie Humphreys was on the first ship after World War II that brought 150 British boys and girls, aged five to 14 years, to Australia in 1947. At 13, he was promised oranges and sunshine and an adventurous holiday, but reality was different.

The Burkina Faso authorities have sounded the alarm over the increased rate of degradation of forests in this Sahelian country.