News headlines in May 2011, page 42

The countries of Latin America are working slowly to overcome barriers in the fight against the often brutal violence suffered by children and adolescents in their homes, schools, workplaces or juvenile detention centres.

The collapse of autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt has broken the state’s stranglehold on the local press, but journalists and bloggers must still be careful what they say.

In the middle of the night, in an affluent suburb a little over 50 kilometres north of Islamabad, Pakistan, Osama bin Laden was gunned down in a compound shielded by barbed wire-topped walls up to five-and-a-half metres high. He resisted, United States officials say, fighting till the death as he had vowed he would.

At a time when most conventional fuels cast ever longer shadows of unintended consequences, algae ­that lowly pond scum-- offers a pleasant surprise: a near-term, low-tech alternative with apparently few of the hidden costs of more elaborate, expensive and exploitive energy sources, writes Mark Sommer, host of the internationally syndicated radio program, A World of Possibilities.

Israelis woke up in the morning of Holocaust Remembrance Day, switched on their radio, and heard unexpected 'good news'.

Shabbir Hasan, 49, was woken up in the dead of the night to the sound of the 'roar of a really low-flying helicopter.' Hasan, a businessman, has lived in the hill station in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province all his life. The sleepy town is known for its educational institutions - and military establishments.

Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, is dead. U.S. president Barack Obama said bin Laden, the most-wanted fugitive on the U.S. list, had been killed on Sunday in a U.S. operation in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, about 150km north of Islamabad.