News headlines in June 2011, page 16

North and south Sudan have signed an agreement to demilitarise the disputed Abyei region and allow in Ethiopian peacekeeping forces, former South African president Thabo Mbeki said on Monday.

Protesters have taken to the streets across Syria to denounce a speech by President Bashar al-Assad, saying his address did not meet popular demands for sweeping political reform.

Michael Lawrenchuk, a Cree political activist from Canada, was given a standing ovation at the International Hydropower Association congress held in this Brazilian border town, after depicting the suffering of his people since dams began to be built on rivers across their land.

It is almost obligatory these days to subtitle books on Pakistan with some conjunction of 'failed', 'dangerous', 'lawless', 'deadly', 'frightening' or 'tumultuous'. Pakistan is a 'tinderbox', forever on the brink, in the eye of the storm, or descending into chaos. It is an 'Insh'allah nation' where people passively wait for Allah.

Fredy Peccerelli and his team of forensic anthropologists sort through human bones and other remains - shoes, clothes, ID cards. A stack of long, thick bones dark with dirt accumulates as they painstakingly reconstruct what they can from Guatemala's La Verbana Cemetery, where for decades anonymous corpses have been dumped.

As the world marks 30 years since HIV/AIDS was first identified, vaccine researcher Dr. Peter Hotez hopes intervention programmes can begin to incorporate treatment for some lesser-known ailments called neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs.

The idea emerged spontaneously, and then snowballed. In just a few months, more than 100 people in Cuba became part of a young people’s social network for diversity, in a society where machismo and homophobia are seen as natural.

Millions of Iranians who have lived under an intense level of internet filtering and advanced monitoring systems for years may soon benefit from new technology that sidesteps the censors.

The African continent, which is projected to make significant economic gains over the next decade, is in danger of being weighed down by a dramatic explosion in population growth.

Last Friday's recommendation to give the incumbent U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon another five-year term drew the international community's attention to another opaque, non- democratic process that is the hallmark of the 15-member Security Council's decision-making.