News headlines in February 2016, page 7

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 10 (IPS) - As the global humanitarian crisis continues to devastate civilian lives in conflict zones, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to the international community to ensure "no-one in conflict, no-one in chronic poverty, and no-one living with the risk of natural hazards and rising sea levels, is left behind."

BOGOTÁ, Feb 10 (IPS) - "I am honoured to be in Colombia at a time when important steps towards peace are being taken," the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, said after meeting with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

TALAWAKELE, Sri Lanka, Feb 10 (IPS) - One and half years ago, Johnson, a 20- something youth, hailing from Sri Lanka's tea plantations, received an unusual request. The caller, someone Johnson knew casually, made an offer for his kidney. "It was for a half a million rupees (around US $3,500)," he said.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 09 (IPS) - The Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) – a 24-hour international watchdog body – is known never to miss a beat.

BELFAST, Feb 09 (IPS) - The World Health Organization has said that ‘Violence is a preventable disease' and people are not born violent, rather we all live in cultures of violence. This can be changed through nonviolent peacemaking and the persuit of ‘just peace' and nurturing of cultures of peace.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 09 (IPS) - The United Nations says it is determined to end female genital mutilation (FGM) – a ritual practiced mostly in Africa, the Middle East, parts of Asia and even among some migrant communities in Europe.

Ibadan, Nigeria, Feb 09 (IPS) - Bolstering widespread prosperity in Africa is a key necessity if the world is to achieve its commitments to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030.

NEW DELHI, Feb 09 (IPS) - The tragic death of 12 women after a state-run mass sterilisation campaign in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh went horribly wrong in 2014 made global headlines. The episode saw about 80 women "herded like cattle" into makeshift camps without being properly examined before the laparoscopic tubectomies that snuffed out their lives. In another incident in 2013, police in the eastern Indian state of Bihar arrested three men after they performed a botched sterilisation surgery without anaesthesia on 53 women over two hours in a field.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 08 (IPS) - The Zika virus epidemic and a rise in the number of cases of microcephaly in newborns have revived the debate on legalising abortion in Brazil. However, the timing is difficult as conservative and religious groups are growing in strength, especially in parliament.

OXFORD, Feb 08 (IPS) - After many years of unprecedented, crippling Western sanctions that stopped Iran's oil exports and even banking transactions, the long and arduous negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France and Germany) culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed on 14 July 2015. That agreement finally reached the Implementation Day on 16th January 2016, coincidentally 37 years to the day when the late Mohammad Reza Shah left Iran for good and paved the way for the victory of the Islamic revolution.