News headlines in April 2013, page 17

WASHINGTON, Apr 10 (IPS) - After another winter of erratic and disappointing snowfall, 75 of the U.S.'s top professional winter athletes are calling on President Barack Obama to take stronger measures to curb climate change.

QUITO, Apr 09 (IPS) - Ecuador's attempt to introduce institutional changes in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has been frustrated for now. Quito is seeking allies to create parallel regional mechanisms, but the risks of losing at this game are high, according to experts and users of the regional justice system.

WASHINGTON, Apr 09 (IPS) - The new U.S. secretary of defence, Chuck Hagel, pushed Monday for reforms of the armed forces' judicial code that would roll back an archaic provision allowing high-ranking commanders to overturn military court verdicts, a move that would particularly impact on cases involving sexual assaults.

WASHINGTON, Apr 09 (IPS) - A U.S.-based civil society coalition is calling on Congress and President Barack Obama's administration to keep spending on global health aid at current levels, warning that recent budget cuts risk a dangerous backslide in health and development gains achieved over the past three decades.

SANTIAGO, Apr 09 (IPS) - The investigation in Chile of the possibility that Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda was murdered by the 1973-1990 dictatorship is seen as a major stride forward in the search for truth and justice for human rights crimes that remain unpunished 40 years after the coup d'etat.

WASHINGTON, Apr 09 (IPS) - The governing programme of Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood has been disappointing. His commitment to genuine democracy has been faltering, and his efforts at inclusion and political tolerance have been wanting.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 09 (IPS) - Edson Godinho, a truck driver with 35 years' experience, was lucky this time. When he reached the southeastern port of Santos in early April, the line of waiting trucks was much shorter than it had been earlier, so he only had to wait 12 hours to unload his soybeans.

MBABANE, Apr 09 (IPS) - For more than a decade after 1992, when Swazi gold miner Benson Maseko, 50, fell ill with chest pains and a nagging cough, he did not seek treatment.

BAJAUR AGENCY, Pakistan, Apr 09 (IPS) - "My sole motive is to serve my people, especially women who have had no role in politics so far. I feel we can make progress only by bringing in women into mainstream politics."

WASHINGTON, Apr 08 (IPS) - The World Bank will be placing stronger emphasis on issues of land tenure and socially and environmentally sustainable agricultural investing, it announced Monday.