News headlines in August 2011, page 27

Lack of budget resources and political will, according to activists, is preventing fulfilment of the provisions of El Salvador's long-awaited new law for the comprehensive protection of children and adolescents.

A women’s group begins campaigning near La Marsa beach in Tunis to convince more women to come up and register in the electoral lists, in time for the deadline now pushed back to Aug. 14. Most of the women watching the proceedings are veiled.

The details would have done credit to the plot of a spy thriller, except they are chillingly real.

Default, insolvency, fiscal irresponsibility, debt crisis and similar terms form part of the vocabulary used to describe countries in the developing South in the 1980s and 1990s. A decade later, the world seems to have turned upside down.

As the world gears up to celebrate the International Day of the World's Indigenous People on Aug. 9, a joint lawsuit filed Wednesday in Hawaii's Federal District Court against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reveals the interconnectedness of environmental destruction and violations of native people's rights.

Witnesses' chilling depictions of a new Sudanese genocide at an emergency congressional hearing Thursday quelled any remnants of doubt that a humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the Nuba mountain region of South Kordofan.

Human rights groups here have welcomed Thursday's directive by President Barack Obama to create a new, high-level inter- agency mechanism designed to help prevent mass atrocities overseas before they occur.

Iran and the United States don't agree on much these days, but there are a few views they hold in common.

In Shishmaref, an Inupiaq village on an Alaskan barrier island north of the Bering Strait, a way of life is gradually disappearing due to higher temperatures, rising sea levels, declining numbers of sea animals to hunt, and shrinking shorelines wrought by climate change.

The endeavour gave a deeper meaning to her life and turned her into an internationally recognised community organiser. Nevertheless, the real wish of Margarita Barrientos is that there would be more need for soup kitchens for the hungry, like the one she founded in the capital of Argentina.