The promotion of biodiversity in agriculture needs political backing, Emile Frison, Bioversity International Director-General tells IPS in an interview. This kind of biodiversity can provide food security and promote health, he says.
How many varieties of date palm or melon exist? And why should we care? IPS spoke to three 'Guardians of Diversity' so named by Bioversity International for their contribution to conservation.
Global house prices are diving further, unemployment in the 16 countries using the euro increased in April to its highest level in almost ten years, and Eurozone Gross Domestic Product is expected to shrink by 1.9 percent during 2009...
Puerto Rican Juan Melendez spent more than 17 years on death row in a Florida prison for a 1983 murder to which another man had repeatedly confessed - evidence prosecutors withheld. He was only released in 2002. Now a documentary by Luis Rosario Albert tells Melendez's story, the multifaceted circumstances that surrounded it and the human rights struggle in Puerto Rico that followed.
Denying women access to political and economic power is a "strategic waste", says Saadia Zahidi, co-author of the WEF’s Global Gender Gap (GGG) report in a telephone interview from Geneva.
Shipping used to be for men. Now women are starting to be seen commanding merchant vessels, oil tankers and cruisers, "manning" ships and operating liner engines.
NGOs like Dignity International are packing their bags to fly to Belem in Brazil where the World Social Forum (WSF) is taking place this year. The stakes are high.
The war of words continues in Gaza, in spite of the ceasefire. Nancy Snow, propaganda expert, talks to IPS about information spin strategies and whether we, the public, have learnt any lessons from Iraq.
The Doha Financing for Development Conference is over and many are now wondering how it went and what really happened. Sylvia Borren, co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), was there.
The oil tanker Sirius Star may be the largest ship to have been hijacked so far, but piracy is far from rare. In all 251 such incidents worldwide have been reported this year to the Piracy Reporting Centre (PRC) of the International Maritime Bureau.
"Our voices must reach the ears of the leaders who govern us," says Marina Ponti, describing this year’s campaign by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP).
"We should not be all that surprised that we are stalled," says Jane Ransom, executive director of the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF), referring to the absence of women leaders in media organisations.
Observe any summit picture - you won't find many women. The mystery of female underrepresentation in the echelons of power persists: after so many decades of the feminist movement, why are women at the helm scarce? A look at the media sector may provide some answers.
The room is packed, the film ends with pounding music, and the word "Gomorra" is shown in an uncomfortable fuchsia over black. The audience applauds and leaves quietly while the music continues to hammer home the message.
Is there a female way to lead? Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has raised that possibility in saying that she tries to lead through consensus, not by imposition.
"Do you think a man could ever be president?" the little boy in Ireland asks his mother. All his life he has only seen women presidents, currently Mary McAleese.
"A woman who enters politics changes; a thousand women who enter politics change politics," Chilean President Michelle Bachelet told the Spanish television channel TVE in a recent interview.
Abu Omar apparently never knew he had been tailed, so he did not notice that the Italian political crime investigation unit, DIGOS, had stopped following him. But the head of the Central Intelligence Agency in Milan Robert Seldon Lady knew that DIGOS had aborted the chase, and that facilitated the abduction of the Egyptian cleric.
In a referendum Sunday Panama unequivocally said 'yes' to a massive canal expansion at a cost of half its gross domestic product, maybe more, in investments. With most of the votes counted, about 80 percent of Panamanians seemed to have approved the mega-project.
"If there's only one sight I'll remember from the destruction of the World Trade Centre, it is the flight of desperation - the headlong leap from the top-most floors by those who chose a different death than the choking smoke and flame," wrote John Bussey of The Wall Street Journal on Sep. 11, 2001.
Michael Karlin, co-founder of Security First, the first Internet bank, retired in 1999. He was 31.