News headlines in February 2013, page 6

WASHINGTON, Feb 23 (IPS) - In a potential new source of contention between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has reportedly granted a U.S. energy firm with heavyweight political connections to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights.

WASHINGTON, Feb 23 (IPS) - The rush for biofuels in the United States has seen farmers converting the United States' prairie lands to farms at rates comparable with deforestation levels in Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia – rates not seen here since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 22 (IPS) - An agreement between Argentina and Iran to dig deeper into a 1994 bomb attack on a Jewish community centre in this city will test the solidity of the evidence garnered by a judicial investigation that has ground to a halt because of lack of cooperation from Tehran.

WASHINGTON, Feb 22 (IPS) - With just a week to go before massive, indiscriminate spending cuts kick in across the U.S. government, policymakers and humanitarian groups are becoming increasingly anxious about the enduring impact the cuts would have on the communities across the globe assisted by U.S.-funded development and aid programmes.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 22 (IPS) - The United Nations has come under heavy political fire for its decision to deny compensation for thousands of victims of cholera in Haiti - a deadly disease spread by U.N. peacekeepers in the troubled Caribbean nation.

CAIRO, Feb 22 (IPS) - Egypt has recently stepped up its support for Syria's armed insurgency, with President Mohamed Morsi urging disparate anti-Assad factions to "coordinate" with a leading Syrian opposition coalition that has taken Cairo as its headquarters.

OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM, Feb 22 (IPS) - The release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in late 2011 set off scenes of jubilation throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, as families joyously welcomed their loved ones homes after months and years apart. But for many of these same families, an Israeli military order – that allows Israel to re-arrest released Palestinian prisoners based on secret evidence – has now shattered those happy reunions.

NEW DELHI, Feb 22 (IPS) - Over a decade ago, the Dongria Kondh tribe – tucked away in the Niyamgiri hills, a mountain range in the eastern Indian state of Orissa – found itself under attack.

PHNOM PENH, Feb 22 (IPS) - Times are tough in this Southeast Asian nation of 14 million people, where over 68 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Formal employment is hard to come by and many workers find themselves drifting in the murky waters of the "informal" market, where wages are unregulated and labour laws are seldom honoured.

GOUDEBO, Burkina Faso, Feb 22 (IPS) - Fatimata Wallet Haibala sits among a group of women and teenage girls under a tent, her handicapped boy on her lap. The scene could be a rural picture of a Tuareg gathering in the desert. But the mother mother of five resides in a refugee camp in Goudebo, Burkina Faso, almost 100 kilometres from their home in Mali.