News headlines in May 2011, page 20

The glamour of the UK royal wedding is slowly disappearing from China's photo spreads, but it seems to have opened the door to a debate on the allure of old Britain's soft power and what makes an aspiring China lacking of it.

By their own account, the police said they had been monitoring five men who attempted to rob a restaurant in the south of the island, and in the ensuing gun battle, four were shot and killed, while the fifth died a few days later in hospital.

Abeer Fakhry, a young Christian woman, had only wanted to live with a man who would love and respect her, and not with her abusive husband. But within months of trying to escape her marriage, and her faith, Abeer finds herself chased by her family, by the Orthodox Christian Church, by the fundamentalist Islamic Salafi Group and, lately, by Egypt’s top army generals.

When the United Nations commemorates the International Year of Cooperatives (IYC) in 2012, the world body will recognise the contributions made by cooperatives to socioeconomic development, including poverty reduction, employment generation and social integration.

Avoiding the costs of traditional microcredit models, remote communities in the La Puna high plateau region in northwest Argentina have launched a successful loan programme that enables them to meet extraordinary expenses such as weaving material, school supplies or medicine.

They represent just seven percent of the workers building the Santo Antonio hydroelectric dam on the Madeira River, which cuts across the Amazon jungle in northwest Brazil. But the women workers total 1,200, and many of them have had to break down barriers to jobs seen as the preserve of men.

Victoria Zanele KaMagwaza-Msibi admits she is no angel. But for 30 years she’s navigated through South Africa’s tough political landscape, mainly as a member of a male-dominated party, and now as the leader of her own political party.

'If they come here to extract iron from the beach, it will mean the destruction of our natural wealth and the end of tourism,' warned Leonel Palma, a hotel employee in Puerto de San José on Guatemala’s Pacific coast, where the government has granted mineral exploration licenses.

There are still gaps between what we recommend and what happens in reality, Dr. Mirna Cunningham, chair of the UN Permanent Forum of Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), told reporters Monday.

The adoption of a new Forest Code in Brazil could threaten efforts to curb Amazon deforestation, which was reduced 70 percent between 2004 and 2010.