News headlines in July 2011, page 5

'Water is life. Water is humanity. How could it be part of the private business?' asked Bolivian President Evo Morales Wednesday, stressing the social and economic consequences of the growing trend of private ownership over water supply and delivery systems in many parts of the world.

U.S. hopes to withdraw forces and leave behind a stable Afghanistan may rest on whether Pakistan and India can lower bilateral tensions and refrain from using Afghan territory for a new proxy war.

Two years into his term, El Salvador's first-ever leftwing president, Mauricio Funes, finds himself more and more distanced from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) that brought him to power and from the promises of change that got him elected, analysts say.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Wednesday identified three U.N. member states - Iran, North Korea and Syria - as virtual nuclear rogue nations for their continued refusal to comply with international obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The IMF’s new Chinese deputy chief Zhu Min is known by many in the financial capitals in the West for warning as early as 2007 about the dangers of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market and its dire consequences for the global economy.

On the road between the Kenyan and Somali border lie the dead bodies of children who have succumbed to the famine and the hardships of making the journey from their drought-stricken villages to Kenya.

Less than three weeks after gaining independence, South Sudan is embroiled in a row with Sudan over pipeline fees charged by the latter to export oil.

Britain has officially recognised Libya's main opposition group as the country's legitimate government, and asked all diplomats belonging to Muammar Gaddafi's government to leave the United Kingdom.

Civil society organisations in Latin America have begun to coordinate joint actions in the region to curb what they see as a tendency towards privatisation, while protesting what they call a range of 'subtle' ways of undermining public control of water.

Two centuries after the abolition of slavery we are seeing the reintroduction of an abominable practice: human trafficking. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that 12.3 million people each year are taken captive by networks tied to international crime and used as forced labour in inhuman conditions, writes Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in Spanish.