News headlines in May 2013, page 24

UNITED NATIONS, May 03 (IPS) - As the world continues to turn digital, so does the United Nations - slowly but steadily.

ADDIS ABABA, May 03 (IPS) - A rebel coalition in Sudan has declared war on the government less than a week after it attacked Sudanese forces. "Now there is a fully-fledged war in the new south of the north," Yasir Arman, a leader of one of the armed groups in the alliance, told IPS, adding that the rebels now control a southern stretch of the country.

MANAGUA, May 03 (IPS) - Nicaragua, which is prone to natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and flooding, is confronting them with prevention measures and community drills and training in high-risk areas.

BANGKOK, May 03 (IPS) - Rendered the nowhere people in their own homeland, thousands of Rohingya Muslims are fleeing inhuman living conditions, lack of humanitarian aid and rising sectarian tensions in their country. And the very state that is supposed to protect them now stands accused of ‘ethnic cleansing'.

RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, May 03 (IPS) - The Islamist resistance group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is being accused by its Palestinian Authority (PA) rivals in the West Bank of Talibanising Gaza and turning the coastal territory into a new Muslim Brotherhood neighbourhood.

MOROGORO, Tanzania, May 03 (IPS) - Smallholder farmer Peter Mcharo, from Morogoro Region in eastern Tanzania, has a reason to smile. His fields are full of green, healthy maize plants, he has richer soil and he spends less time farming now than he did two years ago.

WASHINGTON, May 03 (IPS) - A major study by the U.S. government's environment and agriculture agencies has suggested a strong link between the use of certain pesticides and the widespread deaths that have afflicted honey bee populations around the world in recent years.

MARABÁ, Brazil, May 02 (IPS) - A fresh outbreak of violence between large landowners and landless peasants is looming in the Amazonian state of Pará, in northern Brazil.

May 02 (IPS) - Nora Padilla, one of the six winners of this year's Goldman environmental prize, dedicates her days to organising informal recyclers in the Colombian capital, where the city's eight million inhabitants are just now reluctantly starting to classify their garbage at source.

NEW YORK, May 02 (IPS) - More than seven weeks after the secretive arrest of prominent Iranian diplomat Bagher Asadi, an Iranian official confirmed his detention Thursday, although he declined to provide further details.