News headlines in May 2011, page 17

Environmentalists and rights campaigners have mounted pressure on the Russian government to rescind the decision to demolish more than 500-year-old woodlands to make way for the construction of a new super-highway linking Moscow with the country's northern capital, St. Petersburg.

On the streets of Nairobi James Odhiambo goes from one pharmacy to the next in search of anti-malarial drugs marked with the Global Fund’s logo of a green leaf. He is looking for this specific brand because he understands that it is more than ten times cheaper than the same drug produced by different manufacturers.

'She got a divorce because of her ambition and love of money,' shopkeeper Dulce Álvarez told IPS, about Guatemalan former First Lady Sandra Torres' decision to end her marriage in order to sidestep the legal bar to the president's family members running for the presidency.

The transitional authorities in Madagascar are struggling to overcome the problem of illegal logging of precious wood. In spite of an April 2010 decree that prohibits the logging, transporting, trading and export of precious woods, felling in the forests is still continuing.

The rage was proportional to the size of the crowd cornered between the jungle and the wall that will dam up the Madeira River in northwest Brazil. Over the space of three days, workers set fire to some 50 buses and other vehicles, work installations and even their own lodgings, which were built to house 16,000 people.

'I think the challenges we face are to make sure that we fully implement what we have agreed on,' the Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, Ambassador Gyan Chandra Acharya, told IPS after a press briefing Tuesday on the results of the recently-concluded Fourth UN Conference on LDCs. The Conference, which took place in Istanbul, Turkey, adopted a 10-year programme of action for the decade 2011 to 2020.

A proposal to put an end to the highly anti-democratic nature of the European Union’s Bilateral Investment Treaties was heavily watered down by a plenary voting in the European Parliament. However, in their current form the treaties may pose a serious risk for European democracy.

Recent Muslim-Christian clashes have renewed fears of sectarian conflict in Egypt. But many local analysts - along with wide swathes of the public - believe sectarian tensions are being stoked by elements loyal to the ousted Hosni Mubarak regime in possible coordination with Israel.

The violence and the state of siege in the northern Guatemalan province of Petén, following the massacre and decapitation of 27 farm labourers, has been building up for years.

Proponents of microfinance often portray it as the empowering extension of credit to vulnerable but diligently self-employed poor people - often women - who support each other to improve their livelihoods as well as repay their loans. The image is true, to some extent, but in many parts of Africa, microfinance institutions have somewhat sharper teeth.