News headlines in May 2011, page 11

Amid intensified factional fighting among conservatives who dominate the presidency, the parliament, and the office of the Islamic Republic's Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an appeal for national reconciliation and forgiveness by a former reformist president is making a major splash in Iran's political discourse.

The controversial acquittal of former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo of embezzlement charges was a new frustration for anti-corruption groups who are pushing for reforms to fight impunity in a country where 98 percent of crimes go unsolved.

An international coalition of academics and environmental activists has launched a global campaign for the creation of a new U.N. convention to protect 'mother earth'.

The death of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan earlier this month was hailed by people across the United States and around the world as a fitting end for a self-confessed mass murderer.

Political parties should be forced, through changes in legislation, to bring more women into government.

The Yacyretá hydroelectric dam run by Argentina and Paraguay is fully operational, supplying the energy it was designed to provide when it was built 40 years ago. But critics complain about severe social and environmental impacts.

Sudan's disputed border town of Abyei is ablaze, with gunmen looting properties days after troops from the government in Khartoum entered the area, U.N. peacekeepers say.

Environmental approval for the construction of five hydroelectric dams in Chile's southern Patagonia region has triggered nationwide protests in Chile, giving rise to a citizen's movement whose focus has gone beyond the question of the dams.

Some of the decisions taken on trade in the Istanbul Plan of Action are likely to disadvantage poor countries while others are so vague as to be meaningless, says Abdoulaye Sanoko, counsellor at the mission of Mali to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva.

Very soon wives in Uganda will legally have the right to a share in their husband’s property, that’s if the country’s new speaker of parliament has her way.