News headlines in October 2014

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 (IPS) - Can violence against women be prevented or eliminated with a new international treaty signed and ratified by the 193 member states of the United Nations?

WASHINGTON, Oct 31 (IPS) - According to an article published Oct. 21 on Al-Monitor, the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) has issued new regulations for the school systems under its control in Iraq and Syria. The announced purpose of the so-called guidelines, which carried the imprimatur of the group's "Amir al-Mu'minin," presumably leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is to "eradicate ignorance and disseminate Sharia sciences."

AMMAN, Oct 31 (IPS) - Watching videos and pictures on social media of the advance of the Islamic State (IS) inside Syria made it all seem far from reality to Iraqi Marvin Nafee.

MAPUTO, Oct 31 (IPS) - The woman on bed 27 in Maputo Central Hospital's oncology ward has no idea how lucky she is. In January, when abdominal pains wracked her, a pharmacist suggested pain killers. For months, "the pain would go and return," she told IPS. 

WASHINGTON, Oct 31 (IPS) - The Canadian government is failing either to investigate or to hold the country's massive extractives sector accountable for rights abuses committed in Latin American countries, according to petitioners who testified here Tuesday before an international tribunal.

STOCKHOLM, Oct 30 (IPS) - It demands repetition: water is a precondition for all life. It keeps us alive – literally – while being a prerequisite for or integral part of most of our daily activities. Think hospitals without water, think farms, energy producers, industries, schools and homes without our most needed resource. All sectors, without exception, are dependent on water.

NEW YORK, Oct 30 (IPS) - Kazakhstan being the world's largest landlocked country, and also the ninth largest country in the world of more than 2.7 million square kilometres, hosted in 2003 in Almaty the First United Nations Conference on Landlocked Countries.

LUCCA, Italy, Oct 30 (IPS) - "If  they go ahead and dig those wells, all my work will be destroyed, all my life, everything," says Franca Tognarelli, looking at the hills and vineyards around her house in Certaldo, Val d'Elsa, in the heart of Tuscany.

Oct 30 (IPS) - Up and down the streets of towns and cities in Cuba go horse-drawn carriages with black leather tops and large back wheels, alongside more simple carts, operating as public transportation.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 30 (IPS) - The tight race between incumbent President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil's Workers' Party and her opponent, Aecio Neves from the centre-right Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) party, ended on Sunday, Oct. 26 with the re-election of Rousseff.