News headlines in May 2011, page 36

Global spending on arms in 2010 were an estimated 1.6 trillion dollars, with governments in the Middle East dishing out more than 111 billion for weapons - raising questions as to whether Western arms suppliers circumvented international treaties by exporting to repressive regimes.

Amid a continuing crackdown against opposition forces, U.S. President Barack Obama is coming under growing pressure to impose tougher sanctions against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) lived through a famine that killed, at conservative estimates, nearly a million people in the 1990s, and is now nearing the brink of a second food disaster, according to an extensive study conducted this year by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

The global health agency and a network of non-governmental organisations opposed to nuclear proliferation have resumed their dialogue, prompted by concern over the effects of the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima in Japan and the enduring consequences of the explosion at Chernobyl, in Ukraine.

Fisherfolk and indigenous people in southern Chile have petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in their 15-year conflict with Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (CELCO), a paper pulp company which plans to dump toxic waste in the ocean, and with the Chilean state for alleged human rights violations.

We may soon look back on this period in Haiti with greater appreciation.

It was a highly disciplined campaign focused on the core base of Canadians, especially in greater Toronto, where a large number of citizens of recent immigrant origins helped to boost the Conservatives Monday to a comfortable parliamentary majority status of 167 seats out of a total 308.

Pollsters predict that a majority of voters in Ecuador will approve a package of reforms backed by leftwing President Rafael Correa, in a May 7 referendum that has further polarised the population.

Though they are the world's most vulnerable countries, LDCs have what it takes to become the global economy's next bright spot: an abundant and mostly young workforce, the most prized natural resources (petrol, metals, minerals, crops, and arable land) and a growing drive to attract investors, writes Cheick Sidi Diarra, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States .

U.S. officials were concerned that Pakistan could jeopardise the Osama bin Laden operation and 'might alert the targets', if Islamabad took part in the mission, Leon Panetta, the CIA director, has said.