News headlines in December 2013, page 9

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dic 12 (IPS) - It took them three days to make the 2,000-km journey by bus from their Amazon jungle villages.

AMMAN, Dic 12 (IPS) - Flowers burst out of old tires and rows of pepper plants fill recycled plastic tubs as herbs pop out of old pipes. As utilitarian as it is cheery, this rooftop array is one of several urban agriculture projects that are significantly improving livelihoods for the urban poor in this sprawling city.

BELGRADE, Dic 12 (IPS) - In the early morning hours, as hundreds of people grab their breakfast at a busy bakery in Beogradska Street in the Serbian capital, a very special basket quickly fills up with croissants, rolls and breads. It is the ‘solidarity basket'.

BRUSSELS, Dic 12 (IPS) - As president of the Council of Ministers of the African, Caribbean and Pacific states, Samoa's Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi had the perfect forum to voice his concerns about the effects climate change has had on his island nation.

WASHINGTON, Dic 11 (IPS) - Enhanced efforts to fight malaria have saved an estimated 3.3 million lives and nearly halved the disease's global mortality rate since 2000, according to the latest edition of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) annual "World Malaria Report", released Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 11 (IPS) - When the white apartheid regime in South Africa kept the overwhelming majority of blacks under military repression, the country's security forces were armed with weapons originating mostly from a highly-developed domestic armaments industry.

WASHINGTON, Dic 11 (IPS) - In the midst of a nationwide movement for policymakers to raise minimum wages for millions of workers in the United States, experts here continue to debate the advantages and drawbacks of raising the federal rate.

DAR ES SALAAM, Dic 11 (IPS) - Some say it's the journey, not the destination that matters. Hop aboard the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) line at Tanzania's Dar es Salaam port and begin the 1,860-kilometre journey to Kapiri Mposhi, a small town in Zambia's Central Province, and you may find yourself pondering this adage.

MAJD E-SHAMS, Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Dic 11 (IPS) - The faint explosion is a reminder that though the newly refurbished fence protects their town, the two-and-a-half-year-old civil war which is tearing their motherland apart is never far off.