News headlines in May 2011, page 24

In a dramatic policy shift late last month, Egypt's post-revolutionary government announced plans to reopen the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip. And on Friday, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians amassed in Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand the decision be carried out without delay.

Despite 'considerable progress' made in reducing poverty, 'stark inequalities' remain in Brazil, as well as high levels of police and gang violence in poor urban neighbourhoods, Amnesty International warns in its annual human rights report, released as it reaches its 50th anniversary.

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.

A new 10-year blueprint for assisting the poorest countries on the planet to join the league of the more fortunate ones was approved Friday at the closing of the Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) held May 9- 13 here.

'The future for least developed countries lies in trade, productive capacity and governance more than in aid,' said Cheick Sidi Diarra, United Nations High representative for the Least Developed Countries, responding to criticism of the plan of action put forward as the U.N. conference on the world's poorest nations drew to a close in Istanbul.

In spite of the potential risks posed by unwanted or uncontrolled radioactive materials, Mexico lacks comprehensive mechanisms to keep track of these 'orphan' sources, originally used in medicine or industry, and to prevent them going astray.

The cheapest car in the world proved the costliest for a 34-year-old Left Front CPI-M government in India’s eastern state of West Bengal, as the Indian communists lost the elections here by a wide margin.

The glass isn’t exactly half-full, but it certainly is not entirely empty either. Within the broad failure of the weeklong Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) in Istanbul that concluded Friday, many delegates are taking heart in a strengthening South-South front that has emerged.

As the Syrian uprisings escalate in violence, Lebanon’s black market in arms is flourishing, with prices of light and medium weapons driven higher by Lebanese and Syrian demand.

In Sierra Leone’s highly patriarchal society, where institutionalised gender inequalities are exacerbated by discriminatory customs, one group is singing it’s way towards changing this.