News headlines in April 2014, page 8

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Apr 16 (IPS) - Faced with the prospect of losing miles of beautiful white beaches – and the millions in tourist dollars that come with them - from erosion driven by climate change, Barbados is taking steps to protect its coastline as a matter of economic survival.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 16 (IPS) - Deforestation, especially in the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru, was the main driver of this year's disastrous flooding in the Madeira river watershed in Bolivia's Amazon rainforest and the drainage basin across the border, in Brazil.

KIEV, Apr 16 (IPS) - As local authorities prepare to put an end to opioid substitution treatment (OST) programmes in the newly annexed Crimean peninsula, drug users there say they are being forced to choose between a return to addiction and becoming refugees.

WASHINGTON, Apr 16 (IPS) - In new data certain to fuel the growing public debate over economic inequality, a survey released Tuesday by the biggest U.S. trade-union federation found that the CEOs of top U.S. corporations were paid 331 times more money than the average U.S. worker in 2013.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 15 (IPS) - The United States has rarely, if ever, denied a visa to a head of state seeking to visit the United Nations to address the 193-member General Assembly, the highest policy making body in the organisation.

WASHINGTON, Apr 15 (IPS) - The United States' second-highest court has upheld most of a landmark U.S. law requiring companies to ascertain and publicly disclose whether proceeds from minerals used to manufacture their products may be funding conflict in central Africa.

ABIDJAN, Apr 15 (IPS) - When Ivorian Thierry N'Doufou saw local school kids suffering under the weight of their backpacks full of textbooks, it sparked an idea of how to close the digital gap where it is the largest — in local schoolrooms.

BISHKEK, Apr 15 (IPS) - "I'm going for a swim," says Pelle Bendz, a 52-year-old Swede, as he rummages in the jeep for his bathing trunks. The other tourists look at him, bewildered. What's left of the Aral Sea is reputed to be a toxic stew, contaminated by pesticides and other chemicals.

WASHINGTON, Apr 15 (IPS) - The Bahraini Arabic language newspaper al-Wasat reported on Wednesday Apr. 9 that a Cairo court began to consider a case brought by an Egyptian lawyer against Qatar accusing it of being soft on terrorism.

SAN JUAN, Apr 15 (IPS) - Puerto Rican society has been shaken to its foundations by the announcement in February by Standard & Poor's and Moody's credit rating agencies that they had downgraded the island's creditworthiness to junk status.