News headlines in May 2014, page 14

MAHBUBNAGAR, India, May 06 (IPS) - As the mercury soars above 40 degrees Celsius, ground water level across India is dropping, making it difficult for farmers to cultivate their fields. This is the season when farmers make a special effort to save their crops from wilting. Failure would see them migrate to the city to search alternative livelihood.

PORT OF SPAIN, May 05 (IPS) - Trinidad and Tobago holds the dubious distinction of being among the top 10 emitters of carbon dioxide per capita in the world, much of it due to the petrochemical industry that is the main driver of its economy.

SANTIAGO, May 05 (IPS) - Three private sector initiatives are aimed at carrying water from the rivers in southern Chile to the arid north of the country by ship or through underwater or underground pipelines. The objective is to slake the thirst of the mining industry of this country, the world's largest producer of copper.

WASHINGTON, May 05 (IPS) - Last Fall, I witnessed the Grenada Council of Churches insert themselves into negotiations between their government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) around the island's debt restructuring and presumed austerity policies. Religious leaders called from pulpits across the tiny island for a "Jubilee" or national debt cancellation.

UNITED NATIONS, May 05 (IPS) - The world is slowly, but painfully, moving towards the formal recognition of the existence of a third gender besides male and female.

CAPE TOWN, May 05 (IPS) - South Africa's May 7 elections mark the first time in democratic history that those born into Nelson Mandela's post-apartheid ‘Rainbow Nation' can vote.

HARARE, May 05 (IPS) - Workers Day on May 1 came and went, but it's only a day like any other for disabled 31-year-old street vendor Tsitsi Chikosha making a living selling goods from a makeshift table in downtown Harare.

SANA'A, May 05 (IPS) - The popular uprising of 2011 pushed long time Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh out of power but it has emboldened the Houthi movement that is rapidly changing the balance of power in North Yemen.

YANGON, May 05 (IPS) - Kyaw Kyaw Aung is just 22, but already has dark memories of days when information, sometimes of the mundane kind, could land you in a dark cell for a very long time in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian nation that was under military rule for decades.

CAIRO, May 05 (IPS) - Leila*, 19, has a soft, rasping voice and sad eyes. Her face is striped with long scars but nothing in her neat appearance hints that for the last nine years, her ‘home' has been the streets just north of downtown Cairo.