News headlines in January 2011, page 13

As South Africa declares a national disaster due to flooding, other countries in the region hold their breath while water levels continue to rise.

United Nations officials said they were 'gravely concerned' Wednesday that the current political deadlock over recent presidential elections in Cote d'Ivoire could ultimately lead to genocide, as both sides of the conflict consolidated their forces.

Flood alert levels are on orange in parts of Mozambique as disaster management services mobilise to respond to flooding potentially as bad as the catastrophe in 2000.

Women’s rights in Eastern Europe have been put into the spotlight as a Hungarian midwife faces five years in prison for assisting with home births. Agnes Gereb, who has delivered thousands of babies in home births, is under house arrest on charges of negligent malpractice over five births she assisted at.

With the first National Congress on Heritage Neighbourhoods and Areas, community groups in Chile plan to draw attention to their struggle to defend the country's vulnerable historic heritage.

'Once upon a time,' the educator tells Jewish and Arab five-year-old children, 'a plant laid dormant, holding its life on the darkness around it, beholding the night. Butterflies, flowers and leaves, their caress, were laid to rest. Dewdrop beads, tears in an ocean of hopelessness, enchanted the plant that grew and grew into a strong tree, into an oasis of peace in a land of conflict', into a community of two peoples, Jews and Palestinians.

With the first National Congress on Heritage Neighbourhoods and Areas, community groups in Chile plan to draw attention to their struggle to defend the country's vulnerable historic heritage.

Some four dozen former top U.S. diplomats and prominent policy analysts are urging President Barack Obama not to veto a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution that is expected to reaffirm the illegality of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.

Even while the country has faced civil war and political crisis, innovative research organisations have worked to meet the challenges of food security and rural poverty.

'I knew he beat her but I never imagined that she would end up like this,' Elsa Jerez told IPS, talking about her 24-year-old daughter Fátima Catán, a victim of domestic violence in Argentina who died of severe burns to her body.