Kazakhstan Leads Battle to Ban Nuclear Testing

The first International Day against Nuclear Testing will be marked Sunday by festivities in Astana, Kazakhstan and major cities around the world, with the goal of raising awareness of the importance of banning nuclear tests and to educate people on the catastrophic effects past tests have had on human beings and the environment.

ROMANIA: Austerity Deals Mortal Blow to Health System

Five newborns died last week in a fire caused by an airconditioning fault at a Bucharest maternity. Insufficient, overworked staff and deficient maintenance -- results of inadequate funding of the health system - -were listed among the causes.

ENVIRONMENT-RUSSIA: Threat To Polar Bears Worries Russian Experts

- Environmental experts in Russia have warned that unless urgent steps are taken internationally, climatic changes combined with man-made factors could reduce the world's population of polar bears by as much as 70 percent by 2060.

ECONOMY: “Sub-Saharan Africa Is Speeding Towards Affluence”

Africa is heading towards a bright economic future, according to a new book co-authored by the former director of the French state agency for economic cooperation and released recently in Paris.

Caribbean Civil Society Unites to Tap EU Development Funds

Roosevelt King, the secretary general of the Barbados Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (BANCO), believes that Caribbean governments have dropped the ball when it comes to their commitment to support the initiatives of civil society.

Chernobyl Effects Could Last Centuries

Almost 25 years after the world’s worst nuclear accident a series of new scientific studies have suggested the effects of the Chernobyl disaster have been underestimated.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Rallying Around Mugabe While Economic Unity Lags

Southern African leaders used the 30th Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit of government leaders to rally around Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s land seizures, in a move that undermines regionalism, while lamenting their own failure to implement their decisions on regional economic integration.

BALKANS: Serbia Prepares a New Case Over Kosovo

Serbia is preparing to go before the United Nations next month to renew negotiations over the future of Kosovo, its southern breakaway province that has declared independence and been recognised by a number of countries.

U.S. Journalist To Be Deported From Turkey

Jake Hess, a U.S. freelance journalist who also wrote for IPS on Kurdish rights within Turkey, is to be deported following a government order.

ECONOMY: “Borderless Southern Africa Is a Pie in the Sky”

Regional economic integration plans in southern Africa are not rooted in reality, according to civil society organisations holding a parallel meeting alongside the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Namibia’s capital of Windhoek.

Russia’s Agony a “Wake-Up Call” to the World

A wind turbine on an acre of northern Iowa farmland could generate 300,000 dollars worth of greenhouse-gas-free electricity a year. Instead, the U.S. government pays out billions of dollars to subsidise grain for ethanol fuel that has little if any impact on global warming, according to Lester Brown.

BALKANS: The Turks Return

It's not often that the leading Belgrade daily Politika devotes two of its four foreign pages to the praise of one nation, but it did so for the visit of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month.

EUROPE: Citizen Rights Don’t Apply to Roma

All major European countries plan mass expulsions of Roma or demolitions of Roma settlements. Rights groups warn that these measures entail the criminalisation of an entire ethnic group, and break EU law.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Cancun May Deliver Little

Little hope has emerged from a meeting here of any binding international regulations to reduce greenhouse gases at the next UN conference on climate change scheduled for November and December in Cancun, Mexico.

When Agrochemical Corporations Invented Nature

A civil society protest against a British agrochemical company that claims it has invented a particular sort of broccoli has again focused attention on the question who owns natural biodiversity, especially vegetables, seeds, and many forms of meat and animal food products.

UKRAINE: Punished for Fighting AIDS

Drug users and doctors legally prescribing substitution drugs to addicts -- a key tool in the battle with the country's growing HIV epidemic -- are facing illegal police intimidation and imprisonment, HIV/AIDS activists in the Ukraine say. Fears are rising that the country's approach to the disease could be changing for the worse.

HUNGARY: Austerity Fatigue sends IMF Home

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has slapped IMF in the face, shocking an international community used to news of economic difficulties coming from this small Central European nation. But most Hungarians have welcomed it, at least so far.

Q&A: Clean Energy and Cultural Survival in Nicaragua

For the past six years, French and U.S. engineers have been installing solar panels and wind turbines in the southeastern Nicaraguan town of Bluefields, promoting clean energy and development among the region's Rama indigenous peoples.

GREECE: Society Begins to Crack Under Harsh Measures

Every working day, more than a hundred people crowd around the entrance of the merchant and passenger boats' reconstruction industry, well known as 'The Zone', in the southern suburb of Attiki.

As Sanctions Rise, China Steps Deeper Into Iran

The European Union's new sanctions against Iran appear to open a new space for eager Chinese companies to expand their investments in a country viewed as a rogue player by much of the western world.

TRADE-NAMIBIA: EU Backs Off on EPA

European Union (EU) Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht has appeased leading European civil society organisations about the negotiations for a Southern African economic partnership agreement (EPA), promising "not to put undue pressure" on countries.