News headlines in May 2011, page 37

Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation agreement in Cairo on Wednesday, paving the way for the formation of a Palestinian national unity government. The move, say local analysts, reflects the changing political equation in the Middle East amid the ongoing wave of Arab popular uprisings.

Zambia has enjoyed economic growth of around six percent per year over the past decade, says Patrick Mucheleka, but the government is failing to translate this into social and economic development for the majority of citizens. The upcoming conference on least developed countries in Turkey offers an opportunity to recalibrate the country's approach to development.

'They should wrap up and leave!' says cricketer turned politician Imran Khan, who has been waging a campaign to put an end to the U.S. and NATO presence in the region.

Thousands of Egyptian civilians, including protesters who helped topple the authoritarian regime of president Hosni Mubarak, have been tried in military courts without due process. 'The use of military trials on this scale is without precedent,' says Adel Ramadan, a rights lawyer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

With U.S. lawmakers threatening this week to cut aid to Pakistan over its alleged harbouring of the late Osama bin Laden, concern is growing steadily here over the future of ties with another key predominantly Muslim ally heavily dependent on U.S. aid: Egypt.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) appears poised to issue arrest warrants for three yet unnamed high-level members of the Libyan government for committing alleged crimes against humanity during the past two months of political turmoil that has taken thousands of lives.

'In South-South cooperation we are all partners,' Josephine Ojiambo, ambassador of Kenya to the U.N. and president of the U.N. General Assembly High-Level Committee on South-South Cooperation, told IPS. 'SSC specifically shies away from the donor-client relationship.'

Arturo Sánchez, 72 years old and nearly blind, dreams of bringing ecotourism to Cachuela Esperanza, a Bolivian town of 1,336 people on the Beni river, and hopes the construction of a huge hydroelectric dam will give a boost to his dreams.

A week after U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 sanctioned air strikes against the regime of Colonel Muammar el-Gaddafi in Libya, U.S. President Barack Obama made clear that it would not be U.S. planes maintaining the No-Fly Zone (NFZ). Rather, the effort to safeguard Libyan civilians would be led primarily by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

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.