News headlines in June 2011, page 39

Last year, the online branding company East-West Communications ranked Mexico 191st out of 200 countries on its Brand Perception Index, which is generated by analysing buzzwords in the international media's quarterly and annual coverage of a certain country.

'Look, a swallowtail!' A 70-year old moustachioed man hops jubilantly between rocks and prickly flowers, chasing a butterfly. 'And look here!' What looks like a dragonfly hovers around in a mechanical whirr of transparent wings.

Emissions of radioactive materials from the burning of fossil fuels and the production of chemical fertilisers are another reason to come up with sustainable alternatives, experts say.

Today one billion people are living in hunger, not because of scarcity of production or a shortage of food on shelves in the global marketplace, but because they 'lack the most basic purchasing power needed to acquire it', Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, said Thursday.

Officials underscored the importance of stepped-up action Friday to combat HIV/AIDS, the worst epidemic the world has seen since it began 30 years ago, ahead of a high-level meeting on the disease at the United Nations next week.

Recognition of the rights of nature in Ecuador's 2008 constitution was widely applauded by environmentalists around the world. However, putting them into practice is still problematic due to the lack of legislation and an institutional framework.

President Raul Castro, who turned 80 Friday, is facing the challenge of making the Cuban economy more efficient without abandoning socialism — a course that involves overcoming conservative resistance to change and new forms of working and even thinking.

Honduras was allowed back into the OAS even though it never tried those responsible for the June 2009 coup that ousted then president Manuel Zelaya. But the international criticism and pressure for justice and action on human rights has not let up.

For years, European governments and corporations have made use of a loophole in the Kyoto protocol on climate change to make exorbitant profits. According to some sources, this lucrative scheme has caused more pollution than ever before while lobbyists in Brussels have methodically undermined the European Commission's decision to put a stop to it.

After the most polarised election race in decades, Peruvians will go to the polls Sunday to choose not only a new president but also to decide whether to stick with the current neoliberal economic policies or to opt for reforms to reduce inequality and marginalisation.