News headlines in June 2011, page 41

Securing greater cooperation from China and taking a more flexible stance on Iran's uranium enrichment programme should be the focus of U.S. and allied efforts to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions, according to a new report released here Thursday by a prominent think tank.

Forces loyal to Ivorian President Alessane Ouattara have carried out indiscriminate torture, rape, extrajudicial killings, and other acts of violence and abuse, according to an investigation by Human Rights Watch.

As the world continues to marvel at the widespread progress in modern technology and home electronics, there are still about 2.5 billion people - out of a global population of nearly 6.9 billion - who have little or no access to electricity.

As thousands of right-wing Israeli settlers descended on Jerusalem to celebrate the so-called unification of the city this week, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem were confronted by extreme provocations and the stark reality that their city remains very much divided.

Four decades after Washington declared its 'war on drugs' and began to spread the doctrine south of the U.S. border, the government of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro decided to shift away from that approach towards a strategy focused on community policing.

With deforestation claiming 5.2 million hectares annually and governments seemingly incapable of agreeing on a new pact to curb climate-altering carbon emissions, it would be easy to write off the situation as hopeless.

The microfinance industry is expanding at breakneck pace, with more banks and private equity firms now entering the fray. Yet there is growing unease about the naive assumptions, and evangelical predictions, of its advocates.

Attacks, fear and disinformation are widespread in news coverage of Peru's election campaign, with the leading media outlets taking the side of rightwing Keiko Fujimori in her contest against Ollanta Humala for the presidency.

Even if French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde secures the top post at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the rumblings across Asia convey the message that the international lender's clubby custom of picking a European national to be its managing director smacks of discrimination.

Facing unrest in the north and a struggle against poverty elsewhere, leaders of the African Union and their European counterparts are working as 'equal partners' to spread democracy and economic opportunity across the African continent.