News headlines in June 2013, page 3

WASHINGTON, Jun 27 (IPS) - Indigenous rights groups are applauding U.S. President Barack Obama's creation of a new high-level council aimed at coordinating government actions relating to Native American communities, a move that advocates have been urging since early in the president's first term.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jun 27 (IPS) - Muhammad Shakoor, 42, calls Pakistan home.

Born in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province, he was bundled across the border during the Soviet invasion of his country in 1979 by his family fleeing the chaos of war.

SANTIAGO, Jun 27 (IPS) - Diversifying the energy mix and the spectre of energy shortages in Chile are central issues in the campaign for the primary elections this Sunday Jun. 30, when presidential candidates will be nominated for the Nov. 17 elections.

ATLANTA, Georgia, Jun 27 (IPS) - With the announced closures of four nuclear reactors in the United States so far this year and the cancellation of proposed facilities elsewhere in the country, some activists believe the U.S. nuclear industry is beginning to crumble.

NEW DELHI, Jun 27 (IPS) - On the outskirts of Rudraprayag, a town in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand whose many temples draw tourists and Hindu pilgrims with magnetic force, visitors often stop for a meal at a popular hotel built right on the river Alakananda.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 27 (IPS) - The Catholic Church has become sclerotic and is afraid of facing the issues of post-modernity, Brazilian theologian Frei Betto says, although he hopes that Francis, the first Latin American pope, will inspire it to renew its emphasis on social issues and the defence of the poor.

CUERNAVACA, Mexico, Jun 27 (IPS) - "They brutally repressed us. The mining company buys off people's consciences, it divides the community, but we'll keep fighting it. Some people have had to flee the community," Rosalinda Dionisio, a Zapoteca indigenous woman in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, told IPS, sobbing.

JUBA, Jun 27 (IPS) - Since age 18, Zechariah Manyok Biar fought in the revolutionary army that won South Sudan's independence from Sudan in July 2011. But now the 28-year-old is in exile from the country he helped liberate .

WASHINGTON, Jun 27 (IPS) - Large crowds cheered outside the U.S. Supreme Court here on Wednesday morning as the justices inside announced their majority decision that a key part of two-decade-old federal legislation banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.

WASHINGTON, Jun 26 (IPS) - Groups promoting human rights here are "cautiously optimistic" that U.S. President Barack Obama's renewed pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay will be fulfilled.