News headlines in March 2014

KAMPALA, Mar 31 (IPS) - On a Friday afternoon men wearing long kamis — long white traditional robes — climb the steps to Somcity Travel, a small family business and travel agency in Kisenyi slum, in Uganda's capital, Kampala. The agency boasts that they "fly all over the world" but to one destination in particular — Somalia.

WASHINGTON, Mar 31 (IPS) - The Barack Obama administration appears to have rejected a deal-breaking demand by Israel for an Iranian confession to having had a covert nuclear weapons programme as a condition for completing the comprehensive nuclear agreement.

CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Mar 31 (IPS) - As they fine-tune preparations for the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Conference in Samoa and the United Nations post-2015 development framework meeting in September, Commonwealth states are focusing on getting the international community to pay more attention to the challenges they face.

YANGON, Mar 31 (IPS) - For over a quarter of a century Uhla Min has lived under the spell of ‘The Lady', the popular nickname for Nobel Peace Laureate Aung Sung Suu Kyi.

BANJUL, Mar 30 (IPS) - The countdown to the Gambia's 2016 general elections has begun with a rare move to bring together female politicians from across the divided political spectrum to ensure increased female representation.

TOKYO, Mar 29 (IPS) - This past February, the Second Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons was held in Nayarit, Mexico, as a follow-up to the first such conference held last year in Oslo, Norway. The conclusion reached by this conference, on the basis of scientific research, was that "no State or international organisation has the capacity to address or provide the short and long term humanitarian assistance and protection needed in case of a nuclear weapon explosion."

SEROPÉDICA, Brazil, Mar 29 (IPS) - Brazilian farmer Isabel Michi's day starts before dawn, when she goes out to the organic garden on her small five-hectare farm that she runs with help from her husband and occasionally their children.

DAMASCUS, Mar 29 (IPS) - For just that moment, the refugees in Yarmouk camp in Damascus made news. After months of facing starvation and death in the shadows of the Syrian civil war came packets of food and aid in January - with cameras in tow.

TUNIS, Mar 28 (IPS) - Still not enough is being done to improve the food emergency in Africa's Sahel Region as conflict and instability continue to exacerbate any response towards improving the situation where one in eight people suffer from food insecurity.