News headlines in March 2011, page 37

Forty-four-year-old Ramdeo Chankar Singh is at his wits' end.

There are nearly as many female as male scientists in Brazil. But in academia or in private laboratories, women face subtle barriers to career advancement and equal salaries.

Thousands of women farmers in Brazil demonstrated this week against the use of toxic weedkillers and pesticides on crops and in favour of agricultural techniques that protect their families' health.

Thousands of foreign labourers here are squeezed into houses the government says are uninhabitable, but they are unlikely to get any relief soon, with the non- stop protests in the capital hurting many businesses.

Hundreds of people have converged on Baghdad's Tahrir, or Liberation, Square for an anti-government demonstration despite a vehicle ban that forced many to walk for hours to the heart of the Iraqi capital.

The Bangladesh government is drawing flak from the international community for removing microcredit pioneer and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus from the Grameen Bank that he founded and led.

Paramilitary groups in Colombia continue to threaten, harass and violently attack women's rights activists, says Patricia Guerrero, founder of a leading human rights group.

Thousands of women farmers in Brazil demonstrated this week against the use of toxic weedkillers and pesticides on crops and in favour of agricultural techniques that protect their families' health.

When it comes to breaking through the glass ceiling, astronomers are among the most determined of female professionals. And they have high aspirations. 'The sky is my laboratory,' Argentine astrophysicist Gloria Dubner told IPS.

Burundi will put U.N. Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security into practice with a National Action Plan (NAP) that is ready to be signed within the coming months.