News headlines in February 2013, page 5

MOGADISHU, Feb 25 (IPS) - Media advocates in Somalia worry that a recent case against a journalists who exposed the story of a gang rape involving members of the national security forces will serve as a deterrent to journalists countrywide.

DAKAR, Feb 25 (IPS) - When Abdoulaye Ba heard his local Imam in Dakar, Senegal, speaking out against child marriage, he found that the idea was not very palatable to him. As head of his family, he had intended to marry off his three teenage daughters.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 24 (IPS) - Outraged that they have not been consulted, this week Haitian senators called for a moratorium on all activities connected with recently granted gold and copper mining permits.

WARSAW, Feb 24 (IPS) - Bulgarian prime minister Boiko Borisov of the ruling centre-right Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), announced his resignation Wednesday, following two weeks of sustained protests across the country which were sparked by rising electricity and heating costs.

CAIRO, Feb 24 (IPS) - On a recent Friday, coppersmith Alaa Moussa parked himself in the same spot where two years earlier he had stood defiantly with a handwritten banner addressed to then president Hosni Mubarak. His petition that cold February morning in 2011 had listed the key demands of Egypt's 18-day uprising: "bread, freedom, dignity".

BOGOTA, Feb 23 (IPS) - Two weeks into an indefinite strike called by workers at Cerrejón, one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world, the company has agreed to sit down again and negotiate with Colombia's National Union of Coal Industry Workers (Sintracarbón).

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Feb 23 (IPS) - In his new book, "The Great African Society – A Plan for a Nation Gone Astray", Hlumelo Biko, the son of late Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, says that if nothing changes in South Africa, the country will become engulfed by corruption, crime, social decay, hopelessness and anger.

NIAMEY, Feb 23 (IPS) - When northern Malian refugees fled their country for Niger in 2012, they expected they would be able to return home shortly afterwards. But despite the armed intervention by the French army in the West African nation, few of the 50,000 Niger-based refugees are ready to leave for home just yet.

KOSICE, Slovakia, Feb 23 (IPS) - Local activists have begun protests in Slovakia after a government ministry appeared to give its backing to a controversial uranium mining project despite reassurances to people living near the proposed site that no mining would be allowed to take place.

GAZA CITY, Feb 23 (IPS) - A few stoic lines from Palestinian political prisoner Samer Issawi, 33, transmitted to his sister Shireen have given new strength to Palestinian resolve to fight Israeli occupation and its prison policies. As has the hunger strike of four others in Israeli prisons along with Issawi.