News headlines in May 2011, page 38

Serbia has been reforming and transforming its justice system to more closely emulate international and European models, but the concept of plea-bargaining for more lenient sentences has led to unprecedented protest in the country.

Groups peddling the widely discredited notion that gay people can be 'cured' of their sexual orientation are encountering staunch resistance to their message, even as converts insist that they are leading happier lives.

An estimated 16 million firearms are in circulation in Brazil, 80 percent of them in civilian hands. Most of the guns are unregistered and illegally owned, and the government and civil society are planning a fresh campaign to reduce the number of guns and curb the thousands of shooting deaths in the country.

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.

Three days since the death of Al-Qaeda chief and U.S. public enemy No. 1 Osama bin Laden, there are no public demonstrations to protest his killing, nor are there any other displays of anger or grief in this country of 170 million where he once enjoyed tremendous support.

Taiwan may become the first country in East Asia with a female head of state if opposition Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen wins the island country’s fifth presidential election next Jan. 14.

LGBT social networks and experts with Cuba's National Sex Education Centre (CENESEX) announced Tuesday that events surrounding the Day Against Homophobia will last a month this year in this Caribbean island nation.

Next Monday the United Nations is convening the decennial global conference focusing on the challenges faced by 'the poorest and weakest segment of the international community humanity'. This week-long high level hosted by Turkey in Istanbul is the fourth in the series of ten-yearly UN gatherings since 1981 when the first one was convened in Paris.

You would have to be living in a cave in Tora Bora or North Waziristan to avoid the news of the killing of Osama bin Laden that dominated virtually all media this week. Reactions ranged from juvenile triumphalism through conspiracy theories to the scoring of cheap political points, writes Ingrid Srinath, Secretary General of CIVICUS: World Alliance of Citizen Participation.

The once elusive Osama bin Laden may be dead, but the way he was killed, the secrecy surrounding the covert mission, and the haste with which the body was buried at sea have provided grist for the rumour mill.