News headlines in 2011, page 187

At least 17 people have been killed and scores wounded after three blasts struck India's financial capital of Mumbai, police have said.

The health of the world's oceans is much worse than is widely believed, but it is not too late to change tack and help this critical ecosystem recover, at least in part, experts say.

The daylight is fading, but Francisca Huanca's hopes are growing brighter. 'Yes, they're his sneakers, he liked to play football,' she says with tears in her eyes. She has just caught a glimpse of the remains of her husband, nearly three decades after he was murdered in the biggest massacre committed by the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas in Peru's highlands.

Going to school and receiving an education are opportunities most people usually take for granted. But for 67 million children around the world, such possibilities do not exist.

A 1993 forest act gave back Nepal its green hills, many believe. Activists say the law was also a catalyst for positive change in an area not readily linked with it — women’s rights in rural Nepal.

Fatal outbreaks of food poisoning in the United States, Mexico and Europe expose the failure of regional and global initiatives to ensure that fruits and vegetables are safe and healthy.

Even though government health services are free, Grace Nafungo Kutosi doesn’t mind paying the two thousand shillings (about one dollar) when she visits the non-governmental Beatrice Tierney Clinic in Bumwalukani village. In fact, paying the fee at the clinic, which is a 20-minute walk from her home, is cheaper than her having to travel to the nearest government clinic almost seven kilometres away.

Lady Gaga and Alice Walker don't have much in common. One dresses in red meat; the other doesn't even eat the stuff. One writes lyrics like 'I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your everything as long as it's free.' The other writes 'The Color Purple'.

Domestically abused women who are financially dependent on their abusers can now report the crime with the assurance that they will be able to get financial and medical support from the state, thanks to the country’s new law on domestic violence.

'One hundred percent renewable energy by 2020... It is ambitious but it is not impossible,' Henry Puna, prime minister of the Cook Islands, told IPS in a recent interview.