News headlines in April 2013, page 2

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 30 (IPS) - The face of migration is changing dramatically as women and girls now represent about half of the over 214 million migrants worldwide.

ATLANTA, Georgia, Apr 30 (IPS) - For the second year in a row, activists have successfully defeated a proposal to allow Internet companies to provide customers' private information to government agencies and each other without risking violation of privacy laws and agreements.

BULAWAYO, Apr 30 (IPS) - As Zimbabwe's young politicians increase their demands to be allowed to play a greater role in the running of the country, analysts say that this could signal a change in youth voter apathy in the upcoming elections.   

SYDNEY, Apr 30 (IPS) - Australia's iconic marsupial is under threat. Formerly hunted almost to extinction for their woolly coats, koalas are now struggling to survive as habitat destruction caused by droughts and bushfires, land clearing for agriculture and logging, and mining and urban development conspire against this cuddly creature.

AUKI, Malaita Province, Solomon Islands, Apr 30 (IPS) - The deceptively calm waters of Langa Langa Lagoon on the west coast of Malaita Island in the Solomon Islands is home to thousands of people who have lived on artificial islands for centuries. For generations the islanders in this south-west Pacific nation have employed tenacity and ingenuity to maintain their existence on these tiny low-lying man-made atolls, devoid of freshwater and arable land. But climate change is now the greatest threat to their survival.

HAVANA, Apr 29 (IPS) - Paediatrician Grisel Navarro says she is "a different kind of retiree," because she still practises her profession, goes out and about and refuses to be "at the beck and call of her family's and everyone else's needs," something that diminishes quality of life for many Cuban women when they retire from work.

JOHANNESBURG, Apr 29 (IPS) - As Zimbabwe is expected to head to the polls in a little less than two months, clampdowns on civil society in that southern African nation have increased, according to Godwin Phiri, western region chairperson of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations in Zimbabwe.

WASHINGTON, Apr 29 (IPS) - Environment groups are applauding a new United Nations decision to officially characterise international wildlife and timber trafficking as a serious organised crime, in a move that advocates say will finally give international law enforcement officials the tools necessary to counter spiking rates of poaching.

WASHINGTON, Apr 29 (IPS) - The surviving Boston Marathon bomber reportedly told authorities the U.S. "war on Islam" drove him and his brother to commit their terrorist act. Their linking the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a perceived global war on Islam is at the heart of the Jihadist message Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda issued to the Muslim world almost two decades ago.

JIQUILISCO, El Salvador, Apr 29 (IPS) - Community leaders in El Salvador are opposed to the government's plans to use U.S. aid funds to develop the country's Pacific coastline, on the grounds that it would threaten the environment in a vast area.