News headlines in July 2014, page 11

MANAGUA, Jul 10 (IPS) - The spectre of famine is haunting Nicaragua. The second poorest country in Latin America, and one of the 10 most vulnerable to climate change in the world, is facing a meteorological phenomenon that threatens its food security.

TAMALE, Ghana, Jul 10 (IPS) - The shea tree, a traditional African food plant, represents a major source of income for women in Ghana's Northern, Upper West and Upper East regions, but they are helping to destroy the very resource that gives them money by cutting it down to produce charcoal.

PORT VILA, Jul 10 (IPS) - Populations of many Melanesian countries in the southwest Pacific Islands region are expected to double in a generation, threatening regional and national efforts to improve low economic and human development indicators.

HARARE, Jul 10 (IPS) - For 22-year-old Moselyn Muchena, a final year computer science student at the University of Zimbabwe, it seemed obvious to create a mobile application offering easy access to services in the local catering industry, largely because of the huge number of female entrepreneurs in that sector.

WASHINGTON, Jul 09 (IPS) - Civil rights groups across the United States have withdrawn their support from a major legislative proposal that would outlaw workplace discrimination against sexual minorities, warning that recent legal developments could exempt companies on religious grounds.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jul 09 (IPS) - In recent months, an unprecedented surge of refugee women and children has been traveling alone to the United States to seek protection at our southern border.

WASHINGTON, Jul 09 (IPS) - Visiting Bangladesh has been a lifelong dream of mine, but all that I had heard about a people who love freedom so much that they have withstood great armies, famine and intractable poverty could not prepare me for what I've seen in the last three days.  

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, Jul 09 (IPS) - Marine environmentalist Eli Fuller, who for the past two decades has been exploring the coastline of Antigua and Barbuda, warns that while there has been "dramatic changes" to coral reefs since he was a little boy, "it's getting worse and worse."

ATHENS, Jul 09 (IPS) - Plans by the Greek government to sell companies that handle the key resources of energy and water face serious obstacles and its policy to offer investors exceptional privileges in an effort to boost interest in privatisation is coming under strong pressure.