News headlines in 2010, page 68

Asia’s search for ways to feed over one billion new mouths in the next 40 years is prompting experts to call for renewed faith in its wide network of irrigation systems in order to ensure adequate food production.

A major change in the direction of economic development is essential to avoid the catastrophic unraveling of Earth's ecosystems that support all life, a new global analysis published in the journal Science revealed Tuesday.

A construction project in Kingston's protected Palisadoes wetlands is pitting Jamaican environmentalists against the government in a showdown activists say will end up in the courts.

'They are a heartache,' admitted Portugal's Prime Minister José Sócrates about the draconian economic measures his government approved in a bid -- with doubtful effectiveness -- to calm the financial markets and recover lost credibility.

'They brought me 100 copies, which sold out in less than half an hour,' the vendor at one of the Cuban government's newsstands told IPS, referring to the nearly 100 pages of regulations published in the government gazette. The people queuing up 'just about drove me crazy,' he added.

With tongue in cheek, constitutional experts congratulated the U.S. government Tuesday for negotiating a plea deal with Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr, thus avoiding a trial in the military commission 'puppet theatre' of a defendant who was just 15 at the time of his offences.

Massive slicks of weathered oil were clearly visible near Louisiana's fragile marshlands in both the East and West Bays of the Mississippi River Delta during an overflight that included an IPS reporter on Oct. 23. The problem is that, despite this, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has left much of the area open for fishing.

Gender training for peacekeeping operations 'is not something you do for two weeks before you go for deployment,' says Florence Butegwa, UNIFEM representative to the African Union (AU) and U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

Women in the Sudanese region of Darfur have been raped with impunity since the start of the conflict there in 2003. Now a campaign to reform the rape law is gaining momentum in the country, promoted by Alliance 149, a national coalition born in late 2009.

No longer is the image of women trudging through fields carrying heavy water vessels on their heads just a 'quaint' scene of Brazil's semiarid northeast, for outsiders.