News headlines in 2016, page 53

ROME, Jun 20 (IPS) - European nations from which millions once left to escape hardship and hunger – Greece, Ireland, Italy - are today destinations for others doing the same.

ROME, Jun 20 (IPS) - "Hate is becoming mainstreamed. Walls – which tormented previous generations, and have never yielded any sustainable solution to any problem – are returning. Barriers of suspicion are rising, snaking through and between our societies – and they are killers…"

NEW DELHI, Jun 20 (IPS) - Sunita Pal, a frail 17-year-old, lies in a tiny bed in the women's ward of New Delhi's Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. Her face and head swathed in bandages, with only a bruised eye and swollen lips visible, the girl recounts her ordeal to a TV channel propped up by a pillow. She talks of her employers beating her with a stick every day, depriving her of food and threatening to kill her if she dared report her misery to anybody.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 (IPS) - Evelyn Amony's bravery not only helped her survive and escape captivity from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), but has made her an advocate for thousands of abducted women and children who face long term consequences after returning home.

ROME, Jun 19 (IPS) - Will the rapid--though silent escalation of political tensions between the European Union and Turkey, which has been taking a dangerous turn over the last few weeks, push Ankara to drop a "human bomb" on Europe by opening its borders for refugees to enter Greece and other EU countries?

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 17 (IPS) - The outrage in Brazil over the gang-rape of a 16-year-old girl by more than 30 men prompted mass protests by thousands of women on the streets of cities around the country, while activists complain that the response to the case by politicians has been misfocused.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 17 (IPS) - Only a small percentage of the world's most vulnerable refugees will be resettled in 2017, according to new figures released by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) this week.

ROME, Jun 17 (IPS) - Allow me a rare personal anecdote. In 1965 I met Lord Hume, who had just left the post of Prime Minister and we had a mutual sympathy. Lord Hume invited me for lunch at the Chamber of Lords. Over an extremely delicious rump of Scottish lamb, I asked if I was allowed to ask a complex question. I explained that I had started my professional career as a Kremlinologist, which had served me well in following British foreign policy. One day London was looking to Europe as its compass, and another day, to Washington. All this on the basis of small signals, difficult to detect. Could his Lordship explain to me how to address this dualism?

PEMBA, Zambia, Jun 16 (IPS) - It's just after two p.m. on a sunny Saturday and 51-year-old Moses Kasoka is seated outside the grass-thatched hut which serves both as his kitchen and bedroom.