U.N. Panel Launches Blueprint for Sustainable Development

A long-awaited report by a U.N. high-level panel on global sustainability recommends several far-reaching proposals, including the establishment of new institutions and the creation of global indicators, aimed at protecting the world's environment and strengthening the U.N.'s sustainable development strategy.

The Ancient Wither in New Iraq

"I’d say there are around 5,000 of us in the country, but if you ask me next week we may well be under 3,000. After twenty centuries of history in Mesopotamia, we Mandaeans, are about to vanish." Anxiety about the future of his people is more than evident in the figures given by Saad Atiah Majid, chairman of Basra’s Mandaean Council.

INDIA: Male Activists Enhance Pre and Postnatal Care

The primitive Juang tribe in remote Nola village on Chandragiri hill experienced its first three institutional childbirths only a month ago.

SRI LANKA: Poorest Still Go Hungry

Experts agree that Sri Lanka's free pre and postnatal clinics across the island nation have helped bring infant mortality down to 15 per 1,000 live births and the under-five mortality rate to 21 per 1,000 live births.

SWITZERLAND: Resistance Rises to Asylum Seekers

Switzerland saw a 45 percent increase in asylum requests compared in 2011 to the year before. The country struggles to accommodate the new asylum seekers while efforts to put up new centres face fierce resistance by local people.

JAPAN: Tsunami Brings Sea Change to Tohoku

Yumi Goto, 60, lives with her husband in a temporary shelter on a windy hill that overlooks vast stretches of tsunami-devastated seacoast where her home was once located.

INDIA: Advancing Economy Reveals a Hungry Underbelly

Even a year after Rani, a three-year-old tribal girl in the backward Wayanad district of southern Kerala state, was treated in a government hospital for gastroenteritis she remains grossly underweight and suffers from frequent bouts of diarrhoea.

U.N. Predicts One Billionth Tourist Arrival in 2012

The United Nations, which commemorated the birth of the world's seven billionth baby last October, is predicting the arrival of the one billionth tourist later this year - perhaps in Europe, the United States, South America or Asia.

Half of All Abortions Now Unsafe, Study Finds

The proportion of abortions deemed unsafe rose from 44 percent in 1995 to almost half (49 percent) in 2008, according to a new study released Thursday.

Haitian Diaspora Tests Brazil’s International Solidarity

Brazil, for decades a source of migrants to the United States and Europe, is now facing its own humanitarian challenge: applying the international solidarity it trumpets to the Haitians who are arriving in the thousands, in search of a better life.

HAITI: Displaced Mark a Tragedy That Could Have Been Yesterday

For two years now, since her husband was one of the estimated 230,000 Haitians killed in the massive earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010 and she and her three children became homeless, little has changed for Dieulia St. Juste.

KENYA: Walking Metres Rather Than Kilometres to Fetch Water

The acute lack of water in Kenya means families have to trek long distances every day to fetch water. In both rural and urban areas, people often walk as far as 30 kilometres or more to collect water from rivers, streams or wells. But thanks to self-help projects backed by NGOs, some communities are coming up with solutions.

GUATEMALA: Native People Suffer Racism in Employment

"There's a big difference in the way indigenous people and mestizos (people of mixed ancestry) are treated. We are not paid the same wages for the same work," Higinio Pu, an activist with the native group Waxaquib Noj, which means "wisdom" in the Maya Quiché language, told IPS.

CUBA: Men for Non-Violence

Promoting the first Men for Non-Violence platform is one of the challenges undertaken by a group of social actors who devoted November and December 2011 to the most intensive Cuban campaign ever against gender-based violence.

PORTUGAL: No Jobs? Just Emigrate!

Hounded by the economic crisis that shows no signs of letting up and by political leaders of all stripes, Portugal's conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho sent out an unprecedented message to his fellow citizens: emigrate.

PERU: Weak Environmental Impact Studies for Mines

The stiff local opposition to the Conga gold mining project in the northern Peruvian highlands region of Cajamarca revived a long-postponed debate in this country, on the weakness of environmental impact studies in the mining industry.

SRI LANKA: Tsunami Demons Haunt the Coast

Seven years after monster waves crashed into homes, hotels and vehicles on Sri Lanka’s coast, people in this island nation continue to be haunted by demons from the sea.

CUBA: Racism Finally Debated in Parliament

The Cuban parliament finally included the problem of racism, long a taboo issue in this country, in its debates this week. And the question is also on the agenda of the governing Communist Party's upcoming national conference.

EL SALVADOR: Women Demand to Be Included in Climate Solutions

Some 100 rural women in El Salvador demanded that the government halt mining and hydroelectric projects that are harming their communities and establish specific programmes with a gender perspective for combating climate change.

Mass Tragedy Feared as Closure of MEK Camp Looms

The Barack Obama administration and the United Nations are struggling to convince the leadership of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group with cult-like characteristics, to vacate a camp in Iraq and allow residents to move to another location in the country or risk the lives of as many as 3,200 people.

Armed Societies, Another Tragedy for Women

Kairobis Arcia, 25, died from a bullet to her head shot by her husband, Oswaldo Mendoza, 32, who said he was blinded by jealousy in an argument fuelled by alcohol and drugs.