News headlines in May 2013, page 21

JERUSALEM, May 08 (IPS) - Since Israel secretly deported over 1,000 Sudanese refugees several months ago, sending them back to Sudan and threatening to deport hundreds more Sub-Saharan African refugees, Israeli authorities have suspended this practise in the face of international outrage and condemnation by the United Nations.

UNITED NATIONS, May 08 (IPS) - The story goes like this: a young mother lies quietly in a dimly lit room having just given birth to her baby. For the next seven days she watches over the child with caution, nursing and swaddling it patiently. Fearful that the infant will not survive past a few days, she refuses to give it a name.

MOGADISHU, May 08 (IPS) - At 18, Farah Osman should not be a battle-hardened soldier. He should not have spent the last seven years fighting for the Somali Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab, or have been trained by foreign jihadists in handling and repairing weapons and improving his shooting skills.

WASHINGTON, May 08 (IPS) - Ten years after right-wing and liberal hawks came together to push the U.S. into invading Iraq, key members of the two groups appear to be reuniting behind stronger U.S. military intervention in Syria.

WASHINGTON, May 08 (IPS) - The U.S. Department of Defence is announcing that reported cases of sexual assault in the U.S. military last year rose again to 3,374, a six percent increase over 2011 and a record high.

TEHRAN, May 07 (IPS) - As the five-day registration period for presidential candidates began here Tuesday, the question of whether Iran's upcoming election will represent the will of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or the people of Iran is uppermost on many people's minds, including those of the potential candidates.

DHAKA, May 07 (IPS) - Adaptation and mitigation. Identified by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and by scientists as the two major responses to address the problem, these were also the twin preoccupations of a climate change conference held recently in Dhaka.

WASHINGTON, May 07 (IPS) - More than two dozen environmental organisations are urging California Governor Jerry Brown to disregard recommendations from a United Nations task force to include so-called forest "offsets" in the state's new emissions-trading scheme.

BOGOTA, May 07 (IPS) - The crisis in Venezuela caused by the violent opposition of followers of Henrique Capriles, who is accusing President Nicolás Maduro of election fraud, and peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas in Havana, are occupying the attention of national and foreign media.

HONIARA, Solomon Islands, May 07 (IPS) - Life is difficult enough for communities on the remote southern Weather Coast of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.  Sustaining a livelihood from the land is a daily struggle on the steep coastal mountain slopes that plunge to the sea, made worse by the absence of adequate roads, transport and government services. And now, climate change is taking its toll on the already precarious food situation here.