News headlines in February 2016, page 2

Mahbubnagar, India, Feb 26 (IPS) - Anger is an inner demon that one must have a strong grip on, believes Virayya Shastri - head priest of Maddi Madugu Anjaneya Swamy temple in southern India's Mahbubnagar district. But mention ‘child marriage' and the priest finds himself struggling to stay calm. ""Early marriage ruins a girl's body and scars her mind. There is no way you can call yourself a believer when you support such a thing," says the priest turned anti-child marriage advocate.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 26 (IPS) - Three decades of dengue fever epidemic did not manage to awaken a sense of urgency in Brazil regarding the need for improving and expanding basic sanitation. But the recent surge in cases of microcephaly in newborns, associated with the Zika virus, apparently has.

Feb 25 (IPS) - The Lahore Literary Festival has ended in a blaze of success. The uncertainty about its being held at all and the doubts about the people`s capacity to defy fear and much else made the event all the more enjoyable. But the issues regarding the ways of dealing with security threats that it gave rise to still need to be seriously addressed.

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Feb 25 (IPS) - The greatness of a newspaper is not measured by the size of its readership but by its influence and credibility. That is why the New York Times or the Guardian are better known and more respected than the tabloids in their respective countries with ten times their circulation. Like those broadsheets, The Daily Star too strives for quality over circulation, influence over income and credibility over sensationalism.

Rome, Feb 25 (IPS) - "In 2005 I left my home town in Eastern Nigeria by boat, landing in Athens, Greece along with my fellow companions - members of a football team. I decided to push my luck and moved to Italy in search of what I believed to be better opportunities to start a new life and get a decent job. Unfortunately, this may have just been an illusion."

Feb 25 (IPS) - Some 370 people, believed to be Rohingyas of Myanmar and Bangladeshis, are estimated to have died in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea in 2015, says the UN Refugee Agency.

"The deaths were caused not from drowning but from mistreatment and disease brought about by smugglers who abused and in many cases killed passengers with impunity," it said in a statement on UN News Centre on Tuesday.

BLANTYRE, Malawi, Feb 25 (IPS) - Imagine fleeing from your home because you feel unprotected by the people who are required to so by law. And when you get to where you feel safer, the very same people come to persuade your keepers to let you come back with them, claiming you are running away from nothing! Well, this is the situation some 5,800 Mozambican nationals have found themselves in. Hundreds of them, including unaccompanied children, have been fleeing from Tete Province, near the Malawi border, since late last year following renewed fighting between government forces and opposition Renamo fighters.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 24 (IPS) - The UN Development Programme (UNDP) celebrated its 50th anniversary this week with a pledge to help implement the UN's post-2015 development agenda aimed at eliminating extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

When the agency was founded in 1966, one in every three people was living in poverty. But that number has changed to one in eight, according to UNDP figures.

Feb 24 (IPS) - More than 1,000 women are killed in the name of honourin this country every year, according to official figures. But the actual numbers are believed to be much higher. Saba Qaiser, 19, would have been one of them had she not miraculously survived drowning in a river after having been shot in the head. Unsurprisingly, those who tried to finish her off were none other than her own relatives her father and uncle as happens in most such cases of `honour`crime.

Feb 24 (IPS) - Protesters today confined the Dhaka University vice chancellor over the death of a student of the varsity, accusing the authorities for it.