News headlines in June 2013, page 18

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 11 (IPS) - Author Malcolm Gladwell draws on the science of epidemiology in his book "The Tipping Point" to explain how ideas spread through a population, in the same way as an infectious disease can proceed from a few cases to a full-blown pandemic.

TUCURINCA, Colombia, Jun 11 (IPS) - José "Goyo" Hernández has never been given a mask to keep him from breathing in the coal dust blowing off the 13 trains that pass daily through this village in the municipality of Zona Bananera in the northern Colombian department of Magdalena, during his 12-hour shift at the railway crossing.

VILNIUS, Lithuania, Jun 11 (IPS) - As former presidents, senior diplomats and experts meet in the Lithuanian capital to discuss a litany of rights abuses, lethal epidemics and social destruction caused by repressive drug policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, pockets of hope for drug reform are emerging across the region.

GUATEMALA CITY, Jun 11 (IPS) - Fear and mistrust reign in Santa María Nebaj. The people of this Maya Ixil indigenous town in the highlands of northwestern Guatemala are worried about intimidation attempts to keep them from testifying again in a retrial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.

KOLKATA, India, Jun 11 (IPS) - When 30-year-old Rita Datta (not her real name) decided on a whim to take a computer literacy course, she fell through the metaphoric looking glass into a virtual reality where the most taboo subject in India was transformed into the most simple and natural topic of conversation: sex.

WASHINGTON, Jun 11 (IPS) - Greenhouse gas emissions worldwide rose by 1.4 percent last year, setting a new record, according to data released Monday.

NAIROBI, Jun 11 (IPS) - When she was nine years old, Jane Meriwas, a Samburu from the Kipsing Plains in Kenya's Rift Valley region, was considered of no use by her father. After all, nine of his goats had been eaten by hyenas under her watch.

DAKAR/BISSAU, Jun 11 (IPS) - In Dakar, urban commuters are familiar with kids as young as five years old begging on street corners at all hours of the day or the night, with torn, dirty clothes, collecting donations in an empty tin can.

WASHINGTON, Jun 11 (IPS) - Latin American governments have increasingly been working to lessen inequality in the region, but new data suggests their efforts vary widely in quality and impact.

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jun 10 (IPS) - Africa is the main target for "land grabs" by foreign investors, according to a new report on large-scale land acquisitions around the world released Monday.