News headlines in May 2015, page 6

PARIS, May 18 (IPS) - When some 40,000 delegates, including dozens of heads of state, descend on Paris for the United Nations Climate Change Conference later this year, a group of African women mayors plan to be there and make their voices heard on a range of issues, including electrification.

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 18 (IPS) - Megaprojects are high-risk bets. They can shore up the government that brought them to fruition, but they can also ruin its image and undermine its power – and in the case of Brazil the balance is leaning dangerously towards the latter.

EDINBURGH, May 17 (IPS) - The University of Edinburgh has taken the decision to not divest from fossil fuels, going against the recommendations of its Central Management Group to divest from the coal and tar sands industry, which were was based on a report of the Fossil Fuels Review group that was set up to research and recommend options around investments in fossil fuels.

HAVANA, May 16 (IPS) - During the events surrounding the eighth annual celebration of the Day Against Homophobia in Cuba, it emerged that a young transsexual had recently been killed in the city of Pinar del Río near the western tip of this Caribbean island nation.

UNITED NATIONS, May 16 (IPS) - On Thursday, May 14, a group of journalists rented a boat from Ko Lipe, a small island in Thailand's southwest Satun Province, and headed out into the Andaman Sea – a water body in the northeastern Indian Ocean bounded by Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Strait of Malacca.

UNITED NATIONS, May 15 (IPS) - The Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) Forum will take place next week in New York. Success in achieving sustainable development and tackling climate change challenges requires investment in clean energy solutions.

UNITED NATIONS, May 15 (IPS) - When the United States sells billions of dollars in sophisticated arms to Arab nations, they are conditioned on two key factors: no weapons with a qualitative military edge over Israel will ever be sold to the Arabs, nor will they receive any weapons that are not an integral part of the U.S. arsenal.

NEW YORK, May 14 (IPS) - Every month, more than two billion women around the world menstruate, and yet the topic is still shrouded by a veil of silence. While some girls celebrate their period as the first step into womanhood, many girls in developing or emerging countries are shocked and ashamed of their monthly cycles.

UNITED NATIONS, May 14 (IPS) - Home to an estimated 3.74 billion people, the Asia-Pacific region holds over half the global population, determining to a great extent the level of economic stability, or chaos, in the world.