News headlines in June 2013, page 11

ALFAZ, Spain, Jun 18 (IPS) - The United States and Colombia are the leaders in mental anxiety in the Americas.

Both have good reasons: Colombia has witnessed the longest lasting violence in any contemporary country: from 1949, with some interruptions, then on again from 1964 with the notorious guerilla group, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jun 18 (IPS) - The United States is laying meticulous plans ahead of its 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it has clearly overlooked how its continued drones strikes on the tribal areas of neighbouring Pakistan will affect the much-anticipated pullout.

MALAGA, Spain, Jun 18 (IPS) - The people in the textile factory where Lourdes Soler presented the design of her skirts had never seen such detailed "blueprints" of a garment. Spain's depressed labour market forced the technical architect to reinvent herself and create her own job – a growing trend in this crisis-stricken country.

HAVANA, Jun 18 (IPS) - Jokes, songs, crude gestures and epithets that degrade people of African descent are still common in Cuba, despite the fact that the constitution prohibits discrimination based on skin colour, and in spite of more recent political measures, activists say.

GIRKE LEGE, Syria, Jun 18 (IPS) - A ban on political and even social gatherings, a bar on Kurdish language and culture; uprooting people, forced disappearances and a ‘caste' of hundreds of thousands of local Kurds deprived of citizenship... life for Kurds in pre-war Syria was probably as dire as it is today for their kin in Iran.

DUBAI, Jun 18 (IPS) - Environmental campaigners are urging the Angolan government to halt plans to mine diamonds inside a national reserve that is home to the world's last wild population of a rare antelope, the Giant Sable.

WASHINGTON, Jun 18 (IPS) - The surprise victory of Hassan Rouhani in Iran's Jun. 14 election has provoked a range of reactions here, ranging from cautious optimism about possible détente between Tehran and Washington to outright rejection of the notion that his presidency will produce any substantive change in policy, foreign or domestic.

WASHINGTON, Jun 17 (IPS) - The Supreme Court pushed back Monday against a longstanding practise in the U.S. pharmaceuticals industry under which large-scale companies pay producers of generic copies to hold off introducing those low-cost drugs into the marketplace.

WASHINGTON, Jun 17 (IPS) - In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down voter application requirements demanding proof of citizenship, making it much easier for naturalised citizens to register to vote.