News headlines in March 2013, page 10

RAMALLAH, Mar 20 (IPS) - The rumbling drone of a fleet of U.S. helicopters carrying security and administrative personnel could be heard long before the eight choppers came into view over the Ramallah horizon on their way to the Palestinian Authority  (PA) presidential compound in the West Bank de facto capital Ramallah.

LILONGWE, Mar 20 (IPS) - Malawi's first-ever tripartite elections in May 2014 will be a litmus test for President Joyce Banda, who is faced with an opposition majority in parliament, soaring food prices, and a potential treason trial.

WASHINGTON, Mar 20 (IPS) - Ten years after President George W. Bush launched his "shock and awe" campaign to overwhelm Iraq – and the rest of the world – with the futility of resisting Washington's military might, the public and much of the foreign policy elite appear remarkably uninterested in marking the anniversary, let alone assessing the results.

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Mar 19 (IPS) - A spate of legal battles in the southern state of Louisiana has shed new light on the unfair recruitment and employment practices of Filipino guest workers at several companies in the United States.

KIRKUK, Iraq, Mar 19 (IPS) - Driving into the city of Kirkuk, one is greeted by the view of a huge sea of grey concrete houses from which laundry has been hung out to dry in the wind and be blackened by smoke rising from the surrounding oil wells.

WASHINGTON, Mar 19 (IPS) - A group of environmentalists, gender activists and international finance watchdogs are calling on the U.S. government to support calls for the World Bank to step back from a new programmatic focus on large-scale infrastructure, which critics say does little to help alleviate poverty.

ROME, Mar 19 (IPS) - What is Hugo Chávez's legacy to Latin America? The best way to evaluate a head of state is to examine what is left behind after his or her death. In the case of Chávez, his image is obscured by a series of ideological and cultural prejudices that hide a clear perception of who he was.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 (IPS) - When the General Assembly unanimously adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) back in 2000, water and sanitation were reduced to a subtext - never a stand-alone goal compared with poverty and hunger alleviation.

TEGUCIGALPA, Mar 19 (IPS) - The Honduran government's announcement of its plans to join the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has raised expectations as well as doubts, particularly due to the speed with which it aims to complete a process that has taken several years in other countries of the region.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 19 (IPS) - Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, a leading exponent of liberation theology, the progressive current in the Latin American Catholic Church, does not believe reports that depict the new Pope Francis as collaborating with Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship.