News headlines in January 2013

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 31 (IPS) - The execution-style killing of a leader of the Landless Workers' Movement in a sugarcane plantation in the southeastern Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, where bodies of opponents of the dictatorship were incinerated in the 1970s, recalls one of the most tragic chapters in this country's history.

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (IPS) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced that it will miss an internal deadline to agree on a new formula by which to apportion voting rights in the 188-member institution.

NEW YORK, Jan 31 (IPS) - Mumia Abu-Jamal is without doubt the United States' most well-known prisoner. After living on death row for 30 years, Abu-Jamal's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in early 2012 after decades of advocacy by anti-death penalty and anti-racist activists.

BERKELEY, California, Jan 31 (IPS) - Several dozen people filled the seats in a downtown storefront Tuesday night to plan how to save a landmark they say belongs to the community - a 99-year-old post office the United States Postal Service wants to sell.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 31 (IPS) - What values does a Yemeni journalist who fuelled the Arab Spring hold in common with a former principal of the U.S. National Security Council? And how in turn will they see eye to eye with a Jordanian queen, or the president of Indonesia?

FREETOWN, Jan 31 (IPS) - In the village of Makonkonde in western Sierra Leone, Mabinti, who no longer knows her age, sits on a low wooden stool in the dappled shade of several palm trees. She clutches a solitary papaya fruit in hands toughened by a lifetime of hard manual work.

Jan 31 (IPS) - Fatou Nernee is scavenging through the debris of her home, which was razed to the ground by bulldozers belonging to the Monrovia City Corporation in Liberia. She is looking for something to keep as a treasured memory of a place she called home for over 20 years.

TOKYO, Jan 31 (IPS) - Despite anti-discrimination laws and a steadily growing number of employed women, Japan is falling behind the rest of the world on gender equality. Widespread discrimination persists, and has only grown more subtle over the past years.

JERUSALEM, Jan 31 (IPS) - The Israeli army is systematically using crowd control weapons and live ammunition unlawfully against Palestinians in the West Bank, signaling a widespread breach of military regulations and an alarming culture of impunity, a leading Israeli human rights group has warned.

PORTO ALEGRE, Jan 31 (IPS) - At 8 a.m. on Oct. 25, 1975, Brazilian journalist Vladimir Herzog voluntarily reported to the São Paulo headquarters of the government's intelligence agency and was never seen alive again.