News headlines in June 2011, page 14

It’s only a few hundred metres from the rocky hillside overlooking Lampedusa’s commercial port to the other side of the protected bay. For more than a decade this narrow strip of ocean has been a migratory gateway into Europe for tens of thousands of mostly African migrants. The numbers have risen and fallen in response to shifting government policies and geopolitical developments.

By striking down a law that makes the death penalty mandatory for drug-related offences, the Bombay High Court has raised hopes among rights activists that other countries in the region will follow suit.

'Now I get supplies to feed my children, and I have a family garden where I grow carrots, onions and beets,' Marta Quinilla, a native of Uspantán, an area northwest of the Guatemalan capital that was devastated by the 36-year civil war, says cheerfully.

Hoping to head off growing insurgencies in both major parties over Washington’s participation in NATO’s military campaign against Libya, two key senators Tuesday unveiled a resolution that would give President Barack Obama the authority to continue operations there for up to one year.

Labour and women’s rights groups are strongly criticising the Supreme Court’s rejection of a class action suit brought by current and former female employees of Walmart who sought to represent 1.5 million female employees who claim that the company discriminated against women.

Civil society and the government are agreed: the Democratic Republic of Congo must make public the details of all mining, forestry and oil contracts.

The Libyan government says 19 civilians have been killed in a NATO air strike on the home of one of Muammar Gaddafi's top officials, a day after the Western military alliance admitted killing civilians in a separate attack.

Exactly 40 years after former United States President Richard Nixon labelled his administration’s drug policy a 'war' in 1971, a huge coalition of civil rights leaders, advocates and educators converged in Washington D.C. to expose an on-going conflict that they believe is less ‘a war on drugs’ and more an assault on the rights of African Americans in the 21st century.

After the earth was created, soil formed slowly over geological time from the weathering of rocks. It began to support early plant life, which protected and enriched it until it became the topsoil that sustains the diversity of plants and animals we know today. Now the world’s ever-growing herds of cattle, sheep, and goats are converting vast stretches of grassland to desert.

After a series of hunger strikes and vigils, Fátima Hernández had managed to become an exception, as one of the few rape victims in Nicaragua to obtain justice. But now her fight has started all over again and the hope that her case offered to others might become a mirage.