News headlines in June 2016

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 30 (IPS) - Saudi Arabia's membership in the Human Rights Council (HRC) should be suspended by members of the UN General Assembly, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) said on Wednesday.

MEXICO CITY, Jun 30 (IPS) - The declaration that will be presented for approval at the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in October has again sparked conflict between the opposing positions taken by the industrial North and the developing South.

ARAWA, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, Jun 30 (IPS) - Almost every family in the islands of Bougainville, an autonomous region of about 300,000 people in the Pacific Island state of Papua New Guinea, has a story to tell of death and suffering during the decade long civil war (1989-1998), known as ‘the Crisis.'

JAKARTA, Jun 30 (IPS) - World leaders agreed in 2000 to halve the number of people living in poverty by 2015. The poverty line was defined as the purchasing power parity (PPP) equivalent to a US dollar a day, later adjusted to the 2005 PPP equivalent of $1.25 daily in 2008 to the 2012 PPP equivalent of $1.90 daily in 2015. As the cost of living rise unevenly across the world, the World Bank periodically updates the global poverty line to reflect these changes. Nevertheless, there are many concerns about how the line was defined and has been revised over the decades.

KAMPALA, Jun 29 (IPS) - Patience*, a Ugandan maid, planned on taking her three-year-old son for polio immunization during the country's mass campaigns a year ago, until her landlord's wife told her a shocking myth.

ROME, Jun 29 (IPS) - Thus far, 2016 has proved fatal for the thousands of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in a bid to find safety in Italy. Alarmingly, between January and March, a spiralling death toll was recorded among refugees and migrants attempting to reach Italy by boat from North Africa.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 29 (IPS) - Millions of children still die before reaching their fifth birthday every year, according to the 2016 State of The World's Children Report released here Tuesday by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 29 (IPS) - Bolivia, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan and Sweden were elected on Tuesday to serve on the UN Security Council (UNSC) as non-permanent members, while Italy and Netherlands have split the remaining contested seat.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 28 (IPS) - Currently only six percent of humanitarian aid worldwide comes in the form of cash handouts, yet many aid organisations believe that cash transfers should be seen as the rule, not the exception.

FAISALABAD, Pakistan, Jun 28 (IPS) - Nabela Zainab no longer chokes and coughs when she cooks a meal, thanks to the new biogas-fueled two-burner stove in her kitchen.