News headlines in March 2014, page 5

PESHAWAR, Mar 22 (IPS) - Pakistan may have low prevalence of HIV/AIDS, with only about 9,000 officially confirmed cases, but the country is at high risk, particularly due to a growing number of injecting drug users (IDUs), say experts.

WASHINGTON, Mar 22 (IPS) - Last year, the Philippines brought a complaint against China's aggressive actions in the West Philippine Sea to the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal. It was a master stroke by the Philippine government.

WASHINGTON, Mar 21 (IPS) - Russia's storming of the Ukrainian naval base in Crimea just as Iran and world powers wrapped up another round of negotiations in Vienna earlier this week represent seemingly contradictory bookends to a world that some believe is spinning out of control.

SÃO LUIS, Brazil, Mar 21 (IPS) - "We are victims of progress,"complained Osmar Santos Coelho, known as Santico. His fishing community has disappeared, displaced to make way for a port complex on São Marcos bay, to the west of São Luis, the capital of the state of Maranhão in Brazil's northeast.

CAIRO, Mar 21 (IPS) - When Egypt's then-president Mohamed Morsi said in June 2013 that "all options" including military intervention, were on the table if Ethiopia continued to develop dams on the Nile River, many dismissed it as posturing. But experts claim Cairo is deadly serious about defending its historic water allotment, and if Ethiopia proceeds with construction of what is set to become Africa's largest hydroelectric dam, a military strike is not out of the question.

WASHINGTON, Mar 21 (IPS) - The World Bank Thursday approved a 73.1-million-dollar grant in support of a controversial giant dam project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

WASHINGTON, Mar 20 (IPS) - Civil society and advocacy groups are warning that a prominent carbon-reduction initiative, aimed at curbing global emissions, is undermining land tenure rights for indigenous communities, putting their livelihoods at risk.

WASHINGTON, Mar 20 (IPS) - A major international initiative aimed at promoting transparency in the extractives industry is coming under harsh criticism for accepting an application from Ethiopia, despite significant ongoing legal restrictions on the country's civil society.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 (IPS) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, conscious of the stark ineffectiveness of the Security Council over the upheaval in Ukraine, is engaged in a round of shuttle diplomacy with Russian and Ukrainian leaders to help resolve the crisis in that region.

WASHINGTON, Mar 20 (IPS) - After a closely contested election in El Salvador, the progressive Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) has emerged victorious, declaring a narrow victory over a right-wing opposition party that appealed to the military for intervention.