News headlines in June 2011, page 15

Serious concerns about industrial livestock production in Mexico have been raised once again by recent controversies over the use of the non-steroidal anabolic clenbuterol and a feed medicine for poultry containing aresenic.

Not long ago we were convinced that the more information we had the more aware we would be as citizen and the more likely to make informed decisions at the polls. Today it seems the more information we have, the more questions we have. Ultimately, rather then feeling more secure, we feel more uncertain, writes Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency.

Without a college education and against the backdrop of limited job opportunities, it was not easy for Salome Wairimu to find employment.

As an estimated 3.7 million dollars continues to sit idle in the Women Enterprise Fund (WEF) kitty, the very women the fund was meant to benefit have complained about the difficult requirements that need to be met in order to access the money.

The nurse at Najembe Health Centre in Buikwe district says the centre’s supply of malaria drugs will be finished in two days. A malaria epidemic has hit the area and the demand for the drugs is high. But the centre, which serves the entire sub-county, will have to wait up to six weeks before their supply will be replenished.

Nine years ago, Bhagwati Devi Gautam was a field labourer in Rukum, one of Nepal’s worst insurgency-hit districts. Hurrying to attend a programme on the occasion of International Women’s Day, she was forced to halt at a police checkpoint for the mandatory examination of her handbag.

IBM is partnering with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in promoting its efforts to highlight the challenges and opportunities facing a world of seven billion people—a milestone expected to be reached by the end of October.

It’s 4.30 in the morning and the full moon is low in the sky above Lampedusa harbour as the Guardia di Finanza patrol boat escorts a fishing boat containing 19 Tunisian migrants into the closed military port. They include six women, one child and — to the amusement of the Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) team - one sheep. The migrants are driven away in a coach to one of the two holding centres, some of them wrapped in silver emergency blankets. But the sheep remains in the port.

Three months after the devastating Mar. 11 earthquake that caused an accident at the Fukushima power plant, energy experts warn of economic fallout if nuclear energy is snuffed out too quickly, much to the dismay of an increasingly angry and frustrated public.

The outgoing government of Peruvian President Alan García has suspended construction of the Inambari hydroelectric complex, part of an energy deal with Brazil. But activists say the move is merely aimed at calming tempers among local people opposed to the dam, while handing the problem on to García's successor, president-elect Ollanta Humala.