News headlines in March 2011, page 34

In a contentious free speech case, the nation’s highest court has ruled that the right of a fundamentalist church group to protest at military funerals is protected by the First Amendment free speech clause of the constitution when the protest takes place in public and addresses issues of public concern.

Timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio 2012 Summit hopes to recapture the optimism of that earlier era.

United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Sergio Duarte said heads of state who call for a reduction in military spending should practice what they preach.

The global civil society campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons could be politically reignited by the phenomenal successes of the grassroots demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia, shadowed closely by Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Jordan.

The soldiers fighting against Muammar Gaddafi's forces in central Libya lack training, equipment and numbers, yet somehow continue to withstand attacks and push forward toward Tripoli.

At first glance, the Dominican Republic appears to be a bastion of free information, with seven print dailies and seven national television stations. But journalists here say that more subtle means of coercion have become the norm.

The U.N. has announced that some 200,000 people have already fled the Abobo neighbourhood, in the north of Abidjan. Each morning for a week now, luggage on their backs, bundles on their heads, the sick riding in wheelbarrows, new borns cradled in their arms, thousands of people have fled Abobo on foot.

'I had always associated corruption with politics and business,' laments Chalwe Kabwesha. 'When I failed to access ARVs and TB drugs at our clinic because of corruption, I got worried.'

Africa faces an unprecedented opportunity to transform itself, says the World Bank. Its new strategy for the continent aims to leverage growing South-South investment to ensure more inclusive development, while identifying five poor states as 'Growth Poles'.

As hundreds and thousands of refugees and migrant workers continue to be caught up in the political turmoil in North Africa, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is playing a lead role in reaching out to the displaced providing them mostly with food, shelter and medicines.