News headlines in 2015, page 25

LA PALMA, Cuba, Sep 16 (IPS) - Armando Marcelino Pi divides his day between the university, where he teaches philosophy, work on his family farm, and coordinating a group of 33 agroecological farmers, in this mountainous rural municipality in western Cuba.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 (IPS) - The 28-member European Union (EU), which was sharply divided over the Greek bailout financial crisis last year, is facing its biggest test of unity over the growing refugee crisis unfolding in European borders.

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, Sep 15 (IPS) - UNGA 70 formally commenced on Sep. 15. In accordance with custom, it elected a new President, Denmark's Mogens Lykketoft, who has picked as the theme for his tenure as the President, "The UN at 70 - A New Commitment to Action".

LONDON, Sep 15 (IPS) - Human rights and citizen activist groups are criticizing one of the world's largest arms bazaars, which opened at London's Docklands Tuesday.

TUNIS, Sep 15 (IPS) - Once surrounding castles of old, a moat stretching 100 miles is being dug by Tunisia against alleged terror threats from nearby Libya. Reporters are kept at bay from the digging in what officials have dubbed "a closed military area."

SAN JOSE, Sep 15 (IPS) - After banning in vitro fertilisation for 12 years and failing to comply with an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling for another three years, Costa Rica will finally once again allow the procedure for couples and women on their own.

Sep 14 (IPS) - "Many of them have died waiting for justice. Many have died in silence. We've had enough of painful waiting and unjustified silences. This is the time to join together in the search for truth." With these words, one year ago, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet marked the 41st anniversary of the 1973 coup d'etat in which a defiant general Augusto Pinochet took power by force.

OXFORD, Sep 12 (IPS) - When negotiations between Iran and the European "Troika" broke down, the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami was discredited in the eyes of the Iranian electorate which had seen the futility of negotiating with the West.

New Delhi, Sep 12 (IPS) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' programme is inspired by the East Asian manufacturing export success story of development. Earlier, when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, he expressed an ambition of modeling the state on South Korea.

The inhabitants of the northern Chilean mining region of Antofagasta have the highest per capita income in the country. But some 4,000 local families continue to live in slums - a reflection of one of the most marked situations of inequality in this country.