News headlines in July 2011, page 9

For the first time ever, the finance minister has allocated almost four million dollars from the current national budget to provide free sanitary pads to schoolgirls.

The work of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world's first and only permanent court that pursues war criminals, is likely to be hampered by a shortage of funds next year.

Brazil sets acceptable drinking water limits for 22 different types of pesticides and fertilisers, 13 heavy metals, 13 solvents and six disinfectants. However, these are sometimes exceeded for economic reasons or due to inadequate monitoring.

If voters in this remote village, deep inside Sri Lanka’s former war zone, turned out in strength for the historical Jul. 23 local body elections, it had to do with the availability of buses to ferry them to the nearest polling station 20 km away.

Major operational shortcomings are behind the recent spate of crashes at airports around the Democratic Republic of Congo, raising questions about safety for aircraft and passengers in the central African country.

Swaziland’s economic crisis has affected its ability to provide healthcare as the country’s buffer stock of antiretrovirals (ARVs) has fallen below the prescribed three-month supply.

'It has been 65 years but please don’t retire' Vincent Cochetel United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees joked from the podium in the Museum of the City of New York.

Future glacier retreat in the Alps could affect the hydrology of large streams more strongly than previously assumed, a new study shows. Water shortages in summer could become more frequent.

The powerful Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), in southwest Colombia, has called a 'minga' or protest march to 'curb the militarisation driven by the army and the FARC,' the main guerrilla group, which set off a car bomb on a busy market day in a Nasa Indian town on Jul. 9.

Years of poor policies and neglect are taking a toll on Kashmir’s unmatched ecological assets, that also happen to be international tourist attractions.