News headlines in May 2011, page 19

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.

From Scandinavia to the Mediterranean Europe is being swept by social and political changes so massive that they are calling into question its fundamental principles. Diversity, which has been a positive constant throughout our history, is now considered a threat. The signs are plain to see: a propagation of intolerance and fanaticism, growing support for populist and xenophobic parties, an ever more massive presence of immigrants without status or rights, "parallel" communities that do not interact with the rest of society, the repression of individual freedoms, and democracies in crisis.

More than 3,000 cases of measles have been recorded in the past three months in two districts of Maniema Province, in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

— Indigenous peoples continue to be excluded from decision-making processes when it comes to extraction of raw materials and the implementation of mega projects on their lands.

— UN’s Humanitarian agencies Monday highlighted the importance of a common gender marker to be used by the United Nations to improve its programmes' gender equality, and to track the organisation’s allocation of resources to advance gender equality.

As European leaders increasingly question the concept of Europe without borders and follow each other in announcing the end of multiculturalism, the media response has been mostly to present migrants as destabilising Europe’s labour markets and welfare states.

Women have been taking leading roles in the Arab uprisings of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Morocco and Bahrain - shattering many decades old Western myths that Arab women are powerless and enslaved.

'Hop-a-li, Hop-a-la!' On the stage of the Arab-Hebrew Theatre established in the ancient Arab port of the vibrant Jewish metropolis, a troupe of Israeli men and women interlaces, belly dancing to a frenetic Hafla tune.

More than four years after the EU started negotiating a trade agreement with India, the process has been pushed to a stalemate by the EU’s stubborn insistence in maintaining the so-called data exclusivity clause, despite fierce opposition by Indian government negotiators and Indian and EU non- governmental organisations (NGOs).

On the eve of a much-anticipated address by President Barack Obama on U.S. policy in the Middle East, a new survey suggests that disillusionment with both Obama and Washington's approaches to the region are once again on the rise throughout the Muslim world.