News headlines in June 2011, page 21

Manuel Navarrete fiddles with the buttons and adjusts the volume on the control panel at the Radio Victoria community radio station in northern El Salvador, while he reads over the microphone the latest communiqué in which social organisations express their solidarity with the station's journalists, who have received death threats.

With homophobia on the rise, large numbers of South African lesbians are being subjected to discrimination and violent assaults. There has also been an increase in 'corrective rape' by men trying to 'cure' them of their sexual orientation. More than 30 lesbians have been killed since 2006. But most of these crimes go unrecognised by the state and unpunished by the legal system.

Today millions of women workers from across the globe made history. From June 2011 domestic workers secured the passage of the ILO Convention on domestic work for governments to ratify into law, writes Erika Guevara Rosas, Regional Program Director of the Americas and Christine Ahn, Senior Policy and Research Analyst at the Global Fund for Women.

Only two of the eleven countries that share the Congo Basin have validated their plans to participate in the forest conservation process known as REDD+.

For most of the world the issue of Kosovo is long over. The nation declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and has gained recognition from 76 out of 192 U.N. member states.

A reduction in red tape and an improvement in political conditions means that sub-Saharan Africa is becoming a more attractive destination for foreign direct investment, especially from India.

'The heart has it reasons, of which reason knows nothing of,' wrote 15th- century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. Apply the words of wisdom to the prospective U.N.-endorsed recognition of Palestinian statehood, but replace 'the heart' with 'politics'.

The shimmering green paddy fields across the vast terrain here remain a vivid marker of rural identity. But now, another colour — red — is steadily taking root in the villages dotting this plateau in north-east Thailand that are home to poor farmers.

With the monsoon season upon it, Sri Lanka’s war against the deadly dengue- carrying mosquito faces its toughest test yet, but early signs show that the mosquitoes are not quite ready to give up.

Thousands of civilians are virtually being held hostage in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, where the outlawed Taliban have been refusing them passage to safer areas ahead of a government plan to intensify army offensives.