News headlines in March 2015

KUWAIT CITY, Mar 31 (IPS) - When United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stood before 78 potential donors at the Bayan Palace in Kuwait Tuesday, his appeal for funds had an ominous ring to it: the Syrian people, he remarked, "are victims of the worst humanitarian crisis of our time."

NEW YORK, Mar 31 (IPS) - The Southern Africa Litigation Centre, Amnesty International and over a dozen other human rights organisations including the African Commission on Human and People's Rights have signed an open letter demanding justice for crusading Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, whose exposés have offended several military officials and other higher-ups.

ROME, Mar 31 (IPS) - Driven by solar and wind, world investments in renewable energy reversed a two-year dip last year, brushing aside the challenge from sharply lower oil prices and registering a 17 percent leap over the previous year to stand at 270 billion dollars.

MANAGUA, Mar 31 (IPS) - The new interoceanic canal being built in Nicaragua has brought good and bad news for the scientific community: new species and archeological sites have been found and knowledge of the local ecosystems has grown, but the project poses a huge threat to the environment.

MADRID, Mar 31 (IPS) - The visit to Cuba of Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on Mar. 23-24, and the forthcoming visit in May planned by French President François Hollande, have fast-tracked the agenda of relations between the European Union and Cuba.

KUWAIT CITY, Mar 31 (IPS) - The deadly five-year-old Syrian military conflict, which has claimed the lives of over 200,000 mostly civilians, including women, children and aid workers, has not spared the United Nations either.

NEW DELHI, Mar 30 (IPS) - It calls itself the ‘world's largest democracy' but the 380 million working-aged women in India might disagree with that assessment.

NEW YORK/NAIROBI, Mar 30 (IPS) - Experts from around the world gathered in New York recently to launch work on the Global Gender Environment Outlook (GGEO), the first comprehensive, integrated and global assessment of gender issues in relation to the environment and sustainability.

GAZA, Mar 30 (IPS) - The U.N. investigation into Israel's devastating military campaign against Gaza, from July to August 2014, has been delayed until June and in the interim Israel and the Palestinians are waging a media war to win the moral narrative as to why so many Palestinian civilians were killed during the bloody conflict.