News headlines in March 2015, page 7

NEW YORK, Mar 19 (IPS) - There's little argument about the basic facts: It's ugly (think strip malls and big box stores). It's not very convenient (hours spent behind the wheel to get to work). And it wreaks havoc on the natural environment (lost farmland and compromised watersheds).

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 (IPS) - Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi has called for globalised human compassion to combat the global and persistent problems of child labour and child slavery.

ZARANJ, Afghanistan, Mar 18 (IPS) - Balochistan, divided by the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a vast swathe of land the size of France. It boasts enormous deposits of gas, gold and copper, untapped sources of oil and uranium, as well as a thousand kilometres of coastline near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.

SENDAI, Japan, Mar 18 (IPS) - The Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction concluded on Wednesday after a long drawn-out round of final negotiations, with representatives of 187 U.N. member states finally agreeing on what is being described as a far-reaching new framework for the next 15 years: 2015-2030.

SAN JOSE, Mar 18 (IPS) - A strike that has brought activity to a halt since January on three major banana plantations on Costa Rica's southern Caribbean coast, along the border with Panama, has highlighted the abuses in a sector in the hands of transnational corporations and has forced the governments of both countries to intervene.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 (IPS) - Nearly half of the world's hungry, amounting to about 363 million people, live in some of the rising middle income countries, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Mexico, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 (IPS) - Nine million children have been affected by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, while thousands have lost parents to the virus, according to a new report from The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

WASHINGTON, Mar 18 (IPS) - Earlier this month, President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned speech marking the 50th Anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and the bloody attack on civil rights marchers by police.

NEW DELHI, Mar 18 (IPS) - India's Government under Narendra Modi is in overdrive mode to please businesses and investments in the country. The much aggrandised ‘Make in India' campaign launched in September 2014 is a clarion call for spurring investments into manufacturing and services in India and all eyes have turned to the power sector which is expected to undergo dramatic shifts.

KARACHI, Mar 17 (IPS) - When a group of women in the remote village of Sadhuraks in Pakistan's Thar Desert, some 800 km from the port city of Karachi, were asked if they would want to be born a woman in their next life, the answer from each was a resounding ‘no'.