MADRID, May 16 (IPS) - While domestic violence in Spain is becoming more and more visible, the country?s laws and justice system are proving weak instruments to fight the phenomenon, according to experts from different fields who are demanding further legal reforms to address the issue.

WASHINGTON, May 16 (IPS) - U.S. President George W. Bush's comments in Israel Thursday ignited a political campaign row back home as Democratic leaders decried his comparison of engaging enemies to Nazi appeasement.

WASHINGTON, May 15 (IPS) - In separate speeches delivered an ocean apart, the two standard bearers of the Republican Party Thursday offered rosy visions of a future designed to gladden the hearts of Israel-centred neo-conservatives without offering any details about how their dreams will be achieved.

UNITED NATIONS, May 15 (IPS) - When the United States was ousted from the Geneva-based Human Rights Commission (HRC) back in May 2001, a right-wing Republican politician was livid that "one of the world's greatest human rights defenders" couldn't find a seat in a body dominated by countries such as Libya, Cuba, Sudan and China.

COLOMBO, May 15 (IPS) - Will a new agreement between licensed labour recruiters in Sri Lanka and Kuwait protect the rights of domestic workers who face serious abuse in the Gulf state?

NEW DELHI, May 15 (IPS) - Protests are mounting all over the world against the year-long detention of Dr. Binayak Sen, a distinguished Indian human rights and health activist, under draconian laws in the central state of Chhattisgarh.

JOHANNESBURG, May 15 (IPS) - With the ascendance of China as a robust force on Africa?s economic and political scene, plans are afoot in the European Union (EU) to pre-empt the Asian nation?s dominance on the continent by forming a trilateral partnership that places Europe squarely in the centre.

BRUSSELS, May 15 (IPS) - The European Union has been urged to make its trading relationships with foreign countries conditional on reducing and eventually eradicating child labour.

BAQUBA, May 15 (IPS) - Farmers in the Diyala province in Iraq have been hit by just about every crisis possible. First the security disaster dried up supplies and markets, then lack of electricity cut irrigation, and now comes a drying up of water resources.

WASHINGTON, May 14 (IPS) - More than 150 years after the United States promulgated the Monroe Doctrine, Washington should recognise that its dominance over the Americas has ended and that it must "engage Latin America on its own terms", according to a new report released here Wednesday by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), one of the nation's most influential think tanks.

UNITED NATIONS, May 14 (IPS) - As women's groups and political activists intensify their global campaign for gender empowerment, there is a growing trend towards "gender budgeting" both among developed and developing nations.

LIMA, May 14 (IPS) - Twenty European corporations are being tried for human rights violations before an ethical tribunal at the Peoples? Summit, organised for the third time by the Bi-Regional Network "Enlazando Alternativas" (Linking Alternatives) in Lima. The organisers announced that they hope to take some of these cases to ordinary courts of justice in Peru.

MANAGUA, May 14 (IPS) - The Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega granted asylum to two young Colombian women who survived a Mar. 1 bombing raid by the armed forces of their country on a FARC guerrilla camp in Ecuador.

NEW YORK, May 14 (IPS) - On this 40th anniversary of 1968, the year that for the United States was the apogee of opposition to the war in Vietnam, two new Off Broadway plays explore divergent ways that U.S. citizens protested -- and ponder the best way to contest a senseless war.

GAZA CITY, May 14 (IPS) - The Israeli siege of Gaza that has restricted access to food, water and medicine is now beginning to hit unborn children and newborn babies.

WASHINGTON, May 14 (IPS) - Almost every country in the world has had a civil war, but rarely has a nation survived a second one.

DHAKA, May 14 (IPS) - The right to information (RTI), as espoused by the United Nations and international human rights organisations, does not have full endorsement from South Asian media practitioners and scholars.

BOGOTÁ, May 13 (IPS) - Fourteen former paramilitary chiefs were quietly extradited from Colombia to the United States before dawn on Tuesday on drug trafficking charges, in a move that drew criticism from human rights experts.

WASHINGTON, May 13 (IPS) - Pressed by the demands of the "global war on terrorism", the United States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old.

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 13 (IPS) - The year 1968 has become a symbol, but not necessarily one that is easy to sum up. High-profile violent events involving multitudes of people marked it as revolutionary, but it is hard to define the nature of that revolution. Endless enigmas and controversies still surround it.

NAIROBI, May 13 (IPS) - The Kenyan government has begun transporting certain internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the camps they have occupied for the last four months back to their homes. The IDPs have been assured of support by government once back on their farms.

UNITED NATIONS, May 13 (IPS) - The growing phenomenon of child soldiers -- long prevalent in African countries such as Uganda, Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- is also taking root in Asia, specifically in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma (Myanmar) and the Philippines.

WASHINGTON, May 13 (IPS) - Economic woes and hostility against immigrants in the United States are having a financial impact thousands of miles away, in the communities to which migrant workers send their hard-earned savings.

BANGKOK, May 13 (IPS) - Images of the dead keep trickling out of Burma. The most moving are those of children who died when Cyclone Nargis tore through their world in the populous Irrawaddy delta.

BOSTON, May 13 (IPS) - Anti-death penalty activists are bracing themselves for a wave of executions across the U.S. after the state of Georgia moved swiftly to end the life of William E. Lynd following the Supreme Court's ruling that lethal injection was not a violation of the constitution.

NAIROBI, May 13 (IPS) - Every day, the Dandora dumpsite in the eastern part of Nairobi receives 2,000 tonnes of rubbish -- about half of the waste generated daily by the capital's 4.5 million people. The 12-hectare site is a low mountain of smouldering trash. Vultures and marabou storks circle overhead in anticipation of a meal.

BEIJING, May 13 (IPS) - As the death toll from a devastating earthquake in south-western China continues to climb, the disaster is proving a credibility test for the government, whose mandate is derived from maintaining stability and social order and providing for the welfare of people.

ISLAMABAD, May 13 (IPS) - Allah Hussain Mahsud has little hope in Pakistan's newly elected government's ability to negotiate with the ragtag Taliban militia and end militancy in the country's tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON, May12 (IPS) - The basic democratic principle that "the will of the people should be the basis for the authority of government" is supported by overwhelming majorities throughout the world, according to a major new survey of more than 17,000 adults in 19 countries released here Monday.

WASHINGTON, May 12 (IPS) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged her administration's support for the Lebanese government Friday in the aftermath of Hezbollah's takeover of West Beirut, accusing the Iranian-backed group of "killing innocent civilians" in a bid to "protect their state-within-a-state".