News headlines in July 2013, page 15

BRUSSELS, Jul 12 (IPS) - In an unexpected move, European parliamentarians have approved a new biofuel regulation that will take emissions from indirect land use change into account. The new text allows the biofuel sector to expand, sending a clear signal to world food markets and jeopardising food security for the world's poorest.

SKOPJE, Macedonia, Jul 12 (IPS) - A "virus" of restrictive abortion legislation is spreading from Eastern Europe, health experts and rights campaigners have said, amid Church pressure and misguided government attempts to stop falling birth rates.

WASHINGTON, Jul 12 (IPS) - "Bleeding", "vomiting", "a quarter or even a third" of bodyweight lost, "torture". These are characteristic descriptions from testimony by hunger strikers at the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay of their experience being force-fed at the hands of U.S. officials, published in a report released Thursday.

WASHINGTON, Jul 11 (IPS) - The United States and China have agreed on a suite of potentially far-reaching initiatives aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the world's two largest economies and largest polluters.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 (IPS) - The growing political uproar over the unlawful denial of European airspace for a jet carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales has spilled over into the United Nations.

CHAMPI, Nepal, Jul 11 (IPS) - Radhika Thapa was just 16 years old when she married a 21-year-old boy three years ago. Now, she is expecting a baby and is well into the last months of her pregnancy. This is not the first time she has been with child – her first two pregnancies ended in miscarriages.

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 11 (IPS) - The debate over the reform of Argentina's seed law has pitted transnational corporations that make transgenic seeds against social and rural organisations and academics opposed to the expansion of monoculture in defence of biodiversity and food security.

WASHINGTON, Jul 11 (IPS) - Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who was prevented by Argentine President Cristina Kirchner from testifying before a U.S. House subcommittee investigating alleged Iranian terrorist networks in the Americas here this week, claimed in a recent report that Tehran was involved in a 2007 plot to blow up fuel tanks at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 (IPS) - On Thursday, the international community recognises World Population Day, a time of assessment, discussion and projections for the future that necessarily gives great weight to the rights of women and girls and particularly their sexual and reproductive health.

HAVANA, Jul 11 (IPS) - More than 100 non-farming cooperatives this month joined the independent sector of the Cuban economy, which includes self-employed workers and farmers granted public land to work, as part of the policy outlined by the government for modernising the management of state property.