News headlines in May 2011, page 23

Come rain or shine, single mother of five, Sylvia Mathebula,* can be found selling fruit and cigarettes at the roadside because it is the only way her family can survive.

'Since the government is not helping us with jobs, rather than work as a maid for a white person I decided to start this little business by myself,' she says lamenting the lack of opportunities for unskilled women.

The world is experiencing a change in the geographic distribution of diseases. Traditionally, infectious diseases, which claim the lives of so many children, affected poor countries, and noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, cardiac ailments and cancer plagued rich countries.

As the battle for Libya rages on - with the country’s economic heartland, Misurata, being the scene of some of the uprising’s fiercest fighting - experts are warning that a ‘Balkanisation’ of Libya is possible if the U.S. and NATO opt to exploit loopholes in U.N. Resolution 1973 by arming the opposition.

The murder of Manolis Kantaris, 44, last week has initiated a vicious circle of violence in the Greek capital that deepens the existing wounds of the country and makes many wonder what the future holds for Athenians.

Israeli confidence that Nakba day, marked by The Great March on May 15 in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel and neighbouring Arab countries, would remain under control, has backfired badly.

Mission not accomplished. This is in three words what more than 200 eminent speakers and panelists from over 70 participating countries in effect told their peers, the media and delegates who attended the U.N. Least Developed Countries (LDCs) Fourth Conference May 9-13 in Istanbul.

Carbon finance is putting new and efficient charcoal stoves into hundreds of thousands of kitchens in Uganda — reducing charcoal use and protecting forests as well as saving money for poor households.

Ninety to 95 percent of victims of clergy sexual exploitation are women, according to recent estimates by the Columbia Theological Seminary's Rev. Pamela Cooper White, and yet very few studies have been conducted on this issue.

With Jordan's King Abdullah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coming to Washington next week, anticipation of a major Middle East policy speech by President Barack Obama set for Thursday is growing rapidly.

In the West Bank, dissident voices questioning the Palestinian Authority's increasingly authoritarian rule have become rare. But a young musician in Ramallah refuses to hold his tongue.