News headlines in May 2014, page 8

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 (IPS) - Nearly 20 years ago, the world came together in Beijing for the Fourth World Conference on Women. There, 189 governments adopted a visionary roadmap for gender equality: the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 18 (IPS) - Conflicts with local communities over mining, oil and gas development are costing companies billions of dollars a year. One corporation alone reported a six billion dollar cost over a two-year period according to the first-ever peer-reviewed study on the cost of conflicts in the extractive sector.

TIL KOCER, Syria, May 18 (IPS) - "We all know that Ankara and Erbil have a joint plan to evacuate the entire region," Abdurrahman Hemo, head of the Kurdish Humanitarian Aid Committee tells IPS. "They want to choke the people here until they flee en masse."

WASHINGTON, May 17 (IPS) - The United States is not really a democracy. That's the (simplified) conclusion of a recent study from Princeton University. Instead, economic elites and special interest groups enjoy tremendous sway in Washington, while "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

NAIROBI/MOGADISHU, May 17 (IPS) - Twelve-year-old Halima Mohamed Ali wakes up every morning at five am, but unlike her peers she does not go to school. Instead, she begins her duties as a nanny for five children, the oldest of whom is just two years younger than she is.

WASHINGTON, May 16 (IPS) - China's massive urbanisation has been built, literally, by metal, supplied mostly by Latin American countries (LAC). Yet now China's slowing economic growth and falling commodity prices threaten Latin American commodity booms.

WASHINGTON, May 16 (IPS) - Honouring the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Friday emphasised progress in advancing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons, but a new report on criminalisation of LBGT people suggests that there is still a long way to go.

LIMA, May 16 (IPS) - The trial of 52 indigenous people that just got underway for a 2009 massacre near the city of Bagua in northwest Peru will test the judicial system's independence and ability to impart justice.

ABUJA, May 16 (IPS) - Tomorrow Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan will meet other heads of state at a security summit in Paris, France to focus on ways of combatting Boko Haram, the Islamic extremist group which kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in April.

WASHINGTON, May 16 (IPS) - As the world remains transfixed by the kidnapping of almost 300 Nigerian girls, there have been increasing calls for international intervention in the effort to rescue them. But what many people don't know is that the U.S. military has been active in the region for years.