News headlines in May 2011, page 27

Moves to enact a new law on animal welfare in India have upset public health advocates, who fear it will interfere with efforts to control rabies-carrying stray dogs.

Civil society groups have vowed to mobilise citizens of the world’s poorest nations to take to the streets, rejecting the Istanbul Programme of Action agreed today by the Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries.

There are no publicly named suspects, no defence lawyers and no official victims. And soon, court observers in Cambodia fear, there will be no further Khmer Rouge trials.

A film just released explores the real complexities of relationships for young people in Namibia, and the effects of gender inequality and culture on the choices people make about their sexual lives.

Eight new countries have signed onto the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing. In a signing ceremony on Wednesday, representatives of Guatemala, Indonesia, South Africa, India, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, and Tunisia signed the supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Fourteen others signed the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol.

Schools are becoming the priority target for warring parties in armed conflicts where they rape, kill, maim, abuse, or abduct children, says the Secretary-General’s 10th annual report on Children and Armed Conflict released Wednesday by the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflicts Radhika Coomaraswamy.

Reports that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is considering some form of membership for two non-Gulf states — Jordan and Morocco — confirm that the conservative Sunni monarchies of the Middle East are closing ranks against Iran, Shiite-led Iraq and the democratic wave sweeping the region.

The severity of the recent nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan has prompted U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon to convene a high-level meeting of world leaders on a politically-sensitive issue: nuclear security.

The governments of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay are drafting laws to curb acquisition by foreigners of extensive tracts of their fertile agricultural land.

Yemen’s young anti-government protesters have learnt a vital lesson about the world of politics during their seemingly endless revolution - betrayal is inevitable.