| RELIGION-BRAZIL: Intolerance Denounced at UN | more |
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 3 (IPS) - "Ialorixá" Gilda died of a massive heart
attack in 1999 after members of a pentecostal church swarmed into
her temple and hit her over the head with a Bible. Her death drew
attention to the growing religious intolerance in Brazil, which
was denounced this week at the United Nations.
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| PERU: Petroleum Sullies the Amazon | more |
BAGUA, Peru, Jul 3 (IPS/IFEJ) - "Now the fish are going to disappear," said
Luis Umpunchi, an Awajún Indian, one of about 20 people gathered
around a broken oil pipeline in the Jayais community, in the
northern Peruvian province of Amazonas.
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| RIGHTS-AFRICA: AU Heeds Perpetrators Not Victims | more |
Sirte, LIBYA, Jul 3 (IPS) - The final day of the African Union summit has been
dedicated to the issue of the arrest warrant issued by the
International Criminal Court against Sudanese president Omar
al-Bashir, charged with seven counts of war crimes and crimes
against humanity, including murder, rape and torture.
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| CUBA-US: Frosty Relations No Bar to Communication | more |
HAVANA, Jul 3 (IPS) - Cuba and the United States are poised to resume
talks on migration issues any time now, although the five Cuban
agents imprisoned in the U.S. remain "a formidable
obstacle" to normalising bilateral relations, according to
Cuban parliament president Ricardo Alarcón.
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| RIGHTS-INDIA: India's Historic Gay Ruling | more |
KOLKATA, Jul 3 (IPS) - A day after the Delhi High Court's landmark
judgment to overturn a colonial law that criminalised
homosexuality, Indians expressed mixed reactions to the verdict.
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| Q&A: "The Elites Are Like a Huge Elephant Sitting on Haiti" | more |
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jul 3 (IPS) - Haitian Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis assumed
office in September 2008. Born in the southern city of Jérémie in
1947, she left Haiti with her family in 1964 following a pogrom
by dictator François Duvalier against his perceived enemies in
her town.
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| KENYA: A Role For Men in Gender Equality | more |
NAIROBI, Jul 3 (IPS) - The recent Gender Festival in Kenya has underlined
the important role that male activism can play in achieving
gender equality and women?s empowerment.
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| IRAN: Picnicking Outside Evin Prison | more |
TEHRAN, Jul 2 (IPS) - Outside the gates of Tehran's notorious Evin
prison, hundreds wait impatiently ? some with blankets spread out
in the parking lot on the street below, making time for dinner.
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| US-AFGHANISTAN: Four Thousand Marines to "Drink Lots of Tea" | more |
WASHINGTON, Jul 2 (IPS) - After months of planning and putting pieces in
order, aspects of the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan are
beginning to be concretely implemented ? including a surge of
troops and attempts to curtail the poppy trade that allegedly
funds insurgents.
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| HONDURAS: Activists Decry Suspension of Fundamental Rights | more |
TEGUCIGALPA, Jul 2 (IPS) - Local and international human rights organisations
and left-wing legislators condemned the suspension of
constitutional rights in Honduras during the night-time curfew,
which tightened the state of siege in effect since President
Manuel Zelaya was ousted Sunday.
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| DR-CONGO: U.N.-Backed Troops Abusing Civilians, HRW Says | more |
WASHINGTON, Jul 2 (IPS) - United Nations-backed Congolese armed forces
conducting intensified military operations in eastern and
northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have failed to
protect civilians from brutal rebel retaliatory attacks and
instead are themselves attacking and raping Congolese civilians,
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday.
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| COLOMBIA: "We Will Never Recover Our Standard of Living" | more |
CARACAS, Jul 2 (IPS) - "It never crossed my mind that I would have to
leave my country and leave behind our farms, work, people and
lifestyle. It was a life or death decision we had to take in a
matter of hours," said Amalia*, a 42-year-old married
Colombian woman with two children, who for the past seven years
has lived on the outskirts of the Venezuelan capital.
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| RUSSIA: Chechen Civilians Face Collective Punishment | more |
WASHINGTON, Jul 2 (IPS) - Russian federal and Chechen authorities should
immediately put a stop to home burnings and other collective
punishment practices against families of alleged insurgents in
Chechnya, said a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released
Thursday.
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| MIDEAST: Future of Fatah in Doubt | more |
RAMALLAH, Jul 2 (IPS) - The future of Palestinian unity talks is far more
complex than the bitter rivalry,
bloodshed and division which
represent the yawning chasm separating
Palestine's two main
political factions, Hamas and Fatah.
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| MEDIA-CHINA: Government Attempts to Block "Harmful Content" Thwarted | more |
BEIJING, Jul 2 (IPS) - Beijing?s last minute climb-down on its latest
Internet-censorship effort this week highlights the possibility
that Chinese communist mandarins? main challenge in the future
lies not in quelling political dissent, but reigning in its
tech-savvy educated elite.
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| IRAN: Rights Group Seeks Release of Mistreated and Ill Detainee | more |
WASHINGTON, Jul 1 (IPS) - Iranian authorities should release a prominent
reformist detained during recent post-election unrest to a
medical facility because he has suffered harsh interrogations and
inadequate medical care that could have life-threatening
consequences, said a prominent human rights group Wednesday.
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| LIBERIA: Controversial Mayor is Talk of the Town | more |
MONROVIA, Jul 1 (IPS) - Myaha Johnson sits with her family beneath a flimsy
shelter of black plastic, looking with despair at the charred
remains of what used to be their home. Mary Broh, Monrovia?s
controversial mayor-designate, had just swept through the
neighbourhood with her task force, vigorously tearing down
residential structures along the back road, including their own.
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| RIGHTS: U.N. Revisits U.S. Policies on Racial Profiling | more |
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1 (IPS) - Millions of U.S. citizens continue to face
discrimination at the hands of police and other law enforcement
agencies just because they are not white, although the
country's new leader in the White House is himself of African
descent on his father's side.
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| ECONOMY: Migrant Miseries Will Trickle Down Worldwide, U.N. Warns | more |
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1 (IPS) - At least 150 million migrant workers - out of an
estimated total of 200 million in the world today - fit the
"demographic characteristics of workers who are the most
vulnerable" during the current global financial crisis, the
U.N. says.
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| RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: An Uphill Battle Against Abuse And Torture | more |
KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 1 (IPS) - Domestic helper Siti Hajar, 33, from Garut
district, Indonesia is a picture of calm as she leans against the
wall at a shelter for abused maids and dreams of returning to her
village.
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| MIDEAST: Nobel Laureate 'Abducted' by Israeli Navy | more |
RAMALLAH, Jul 1 (IPS) - Twenty-one international peace activists were
seized by Israeli naval frigates in
international waters Tuesday
as their boat 'The Spirit of Humanity' tried to carry
humanitarian aid to Gaza.
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| US-HONDURAS: Dictatorships and Double Standards Revisited | more |
WASHINGTON, Jul 1 (IPS) - When the Honduran military deposed President Manuel
Zelaya on Sunday, in an incident that stirred memories of Cold
War military coups in Latin America, it also seems to have caused
at least some foreign policy commentators here to revert to
positions reminiscent of the Cold War.
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| AUSTRALIA: Attacks Expose Ills Of A Much-Touted Education System | more |
SYDNEY, Jul 1 (IPS) - The modern façade of its cities, cost-effectiveness
and its high standards of education make Australia an attractive
destination for foreign students. But the recent spate of attacks
on Indian students has exposed the many ills afflicting the
Australian education system, threatening its lucrative markets.
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| AUSTRIA: Racism on a Sharp Rise | more |
VIENNA, Jul 1 (IPS) - Mainstream political parties in Austria must change
their approach if a growing
anti-immigrant sentiment stoked by
far-right politicians is to be curbed, racism
watchdogs and
political analysts say.
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| MIDEAST: Finding Fish, But Israelis Too | more |
GAZA CITY, Jul 1 (IPS) - "They told us 'go west or we will shoot
you'," says Ashraf Sadallah. "Initially, we
refused, so they began shooting very close all around our
boat."
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| BURMA: U.N. Chief Comes Calling with Politics on His Mind | more |
BANGKOK, Jul 1 (IPS) - The return this week of U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon to military-ruled Burma gives the mission an air of a
high-stakes gamble. On the line is the world body?s credibility
to make headway in a country where outside pressure to break a
political deadlock is frequently ignored by the military junta.
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| HONDURAS: Regime Faces International Isolation | more |
TEGUCIGALPA, Jun 30 (IPS) - In the midst of the international isolation faced
by the new government named by the Honduran Congress to replace
President Manuel Zelaya who was ousted Sunday, the courts issued
an arrest warrant for the leader Tuesday.
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| IRAN: Anger and Despair Linger After Govt Confirms Poll | more |
TEHRAN, Jun 30 (IPS) - On Monday, after a televised counting of the 10
percent of the ballot boxes, the body that oversees Iranian
elections upheld the results of the disputed presidential
elections.
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| POLITICS: Deposed Honduran President Speaks at U.N. | more |
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 30 (IPS) - Just a few days after being expelled from Honduras,
the country that he was democratically elected to lead, Jose
Manuel Zelaya Rosales addressed the U.N. General Assembly
Tuesday, witnessing the unanimous passage of resolution that
demands his reinstatement.
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| AFRICA: Maternal Mortality, A Human Rights Catastrophe | more |
BRUSSELS and CAPE TOWN, Jun 30 (IPS) - The right to the highest attainable standard of
health: not the most fashionable of human rights, but the limits
on people's enjoyment of their right to health often coincide
with continuing inequalities behind claims of economic growth or
political reform.
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