News headlines in December 2015, page 2

KAMPALA, Dec 23 (IPS) - Ugandan farmers are increasingly inter-planting coffee, the country's primary export, and banana, a staple food, as a way of coping with the effects of climate change.

SHURUGWI, Zimbabwe, Dec 22 (IPS) - Wheelchair-bound, her body now skeletal from full blown AIDS, disabled 38-year-old Melisa Chigumba attempts to wave away a swarm of flies hovering around her face as she sits outside her home in Chachacha, a remote area in Shurugwi, 278 kilometers south of the capital, Harare.

DURBAN, Dec 22 (IPS) - On 21 November 2015, during ACCORD's 2015 Africa Peace Award celebration, I made a call for the United Nations to convene the first ever UN Global Conference on Peace.

SAWRÉ MUYBU, Brazil, Dec 21 (IPS) - At dusk on the Tapajós River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River in northern Brazil, the Mundurukú indigenous people gather to bathe and wash clothes in these waters rich in fish, the staple of their diet. But the "evil spirit", as they refer in their language to the Sao Luiz Tapajós dam, threatens to leave most of their territory – and their way of life – under water.

Dec 21 (IPS) - The last week of November marked another phase of an ongoing shift in the Turkish Government´s approach to human rights issues – Two important events highlighted the ongoing attack freedom of press is suffering in Turkey. First two prominent Turkish journalists were arrested after publishing a story claiming that members of the state intelligence agency had provided weapons to Syrian rebels; second, lawyer and leading human rights defender and Tahir Elçi, President of the Diyarbakir Bar Association in south eastern Turkey, was killed in crossfire while making a press statement on Saturday 28th of November.

COLOMBO Sri Lanka, Dec 21 (IPS) - Details of a secret detention center, where serious human rights abuses took place, deep inside the sprawling Tricomalee Naval base in the east of Sri Lanka are slowly emerging.

ROME, Dec 21 (IPS) - One of the most significant aspects of the international conference on climate change, concluded in Paris on December 12, is that food security and ending hunger feature in the global agenda of the climate change debate.

EL CONGO, El Salvador, Dec 18 (IPS) - Sitting in front of a pile of coffee beans that she has just picked, Ilsy Membreño separates the green cherries from the ripe red ones with a worried look on her face, lamenting the bad harvest on the farm where she works in western El Salvador and the low daily wages she is earning.

ROME, Dec 18 (IPS) - "In Beirut I was like a bird in a cage, I felt like a prisoner. Today, I have the chance to let my dreams come true, make a living with my music, realizing my dad's project: open a new Alpha – my family's cultural center, destroyed during the war- to share Syrian culture and help my people in Europe," Alaa Arsheed, a Syrian refugee, told IPS.

TEXCOCO, Mexico, Dec 18 (IPS) - Every day in the wee hours of the morning Verónica Reyes' extended family grinds corn to make the dough they use in the tacos they sell from their food truck in Mexico City.