News headlines in April 2013, page 16

WASHINGTON, Apr 11 (IPS) - U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday asked Congress to approve some 52 billion dollars in foreign aid and international spending in 2014, slightly higher than the current year's budget which was cut due to the partisan impasse over how to reduce the yawning federal deficit.

SANTIAGO, Apr 10 (IPS) - Environmental groups and indigenous Diaguita communities of the Huasco Valley in northern Chile celebrated a court decision Wednesday that will bring to a complete halt work on the Pascua Lama gold, silver and copper mine belonging to Canada's Barrick gold.

WASHINGTON, Apr 10 (IPS) - Nascent carbon emissions-trading exchanges in several countries are increasingly looking at options to interlink with one another, which advocates say would offer investors long-term stability, increase revenues for the development of renewable energy and strengthen corporate support for climate policy.

SAN SALVADOR, Apr 10 (IPS) - Several brutal, high-profile murders of women in the last few weeks in El Salvador are just the latest reminder that this is one of the countries in the world with the highest number of femicides, the term used to describe the killing of women because they are female.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 10 (IPS) - As the global South claims a greater share of the world's GDP, is it also progressing in terms of overall human development? How has this southward tipping of the scale affected the dynamics of international trade? What is the role of global governance in mediating this period of change?

RANCAGUA, Chile, Apr 10 (IPS) - El Teniente, the world's largest underground copper mine, has already been in operation since 1905, but the state-owned National Copper Corporation of Chile (CODELCO) wants to keep it running for another 50 years.

BRUSSELS, Apr 10 (IPS) - The European Commission has unveiled a blueprint for global development aid and called on world leaders to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with an international aid framework based on sustainable and inclusive development tackling poverty at its roots.

MUNDA, Solomon Islands, Apr 10 (IPS) - With little more than a bush knife and an axe between them, a group of young boys between the ages of nine and 18 years have taken food security into their own hands. In Kindu, a community of 5,000 people in the coastal urban area of Munda in the Solomon Islands, these boys, who have been abandoned by their parents, have transformed their lives by establishing a cooperatively run farm.

GINOWAN, Japan, Apr 10 (IPS) - The island of Okinawa has long been known as the base camp for a majority of the United States' 50,000 troops in Japan. But now, against the backdrop of escalating nuclear threats from North Korea, local leaders are pushing hard to promote this island – the largest of 60 that comprise Japan's southern prefecture – and its surrounding islets as a lucrative site for commercial enterprises.

NIAMEY, Apr 10 (IPS) - About 20 communities in Tillabéri, west Niger, have been declared open defecation-free zones as across the country, very few people have access to proper sanitation.