News headlines in 2013, page 14

TEGUCIGALPA, Dic 03 (IPS) - The recent elections which were expected to strengthen the fabric of governance in Honduras failed to do so. Now the country has a president-elect with just 38.7 percent support who is facing accusations of electoral fraud, along with a fragmented parliament where the governing party will be in the minority.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Dic 03 (IPS) - Haiti's minimum wage will nudge up 12 percent on Jan. 1, from 4.65 to 5.23 dollars (or 200 to 225 gourdes) per day. Calculated hourly, it is up from 58 cents to 65 cents per hour, before taxes.

MONTEVIDEO, Dic 03 (IPS) - The Uruguayan government, which recently passed a law on large-scale mining, does not actually have a clear idea of the country's mineral wealth and has only just now proposed a geological study to find out.

ATHENS, Dic 03 (IPS) - A Nov. 19 paper by the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU diplomatic corps, considers the possibility of the European military getting involved in the south Mediterranean in an effort to curb the influx of irregular migrants and refugees into Europe.

NDOP, Cameroon, Dic 03 (IPS) - For more than 20 years, Anastasia Ngwakun from Bamunkumbit village in central Cameroon has been farming rice the hard way – using only hand tools. But Ngwakun knows that if she were a man, she would have access to the technology that would not require her to work so hard.

WASHINGTON, Dic 03 (IPS) - The gap in health standards between the world's poorest countries and the more advanced middle-income nations could close by the year 2035, according to a major new report published Tuesday by Britain's The Lancet medical journal.

MALVINAS ARGENTINAS, Córdoba, Argentina, Dic 02 (IPS) - The people of this working-class suburb of Córdoba in Argentina's central farming belt stoically put up with the spraying of the week-killer glyphosate on the fields surrounding their neighbourhood. But the last straw was when U.S. biotech giant Monsanto showed up to build a seed plant.

SRINAGAR, India, Dic 02 (IPS) - A vast and picturesque meadow called Tosamaidan, about 112 km west of Jammu and Kashmir's capital Srinagar, has now become the rallying point for hundreds of villagers who want the artillery exercises being carried out there by the Indian Army to stop.

AUKI, Malaita Province, Solomon Islands, Dic 01 (IPS) - Logging is the largest industry in the Solomon Islands, an archipelago located northwest of Fiji, where 80 percent of the islands are covered in tropical rainforest. But, although timber accounts for 60 percent of this South Pacific nation's export earnings, most local communities have experienced no beneficial development.

NEW YORK, Dic 01 (IPS) - Watching the colossal destruction of Typhoon Haiyan over the past month, Columbia University Professor Graciela Chichilnisky knows one thing for sure: climate change will likely result in more of these massive storms, threatening the very existence of humanity.