News headlines in August 2012, page 28

NEW YORK, Aug 02 (IPS) - Roasted foie gras fillet, with fresh chestnuts and soymilk skin. This dish from Mugaritz, considered the third-best restaurant in the world, sounds exotic. But how this "delicacy" - foie gras means "fat liver" - is produced and at what cost have been unmasked in an investigation led by Animal Equality.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 02 (IPS) - "My sons will be anything, but never fishermen,” said 32-year-old Maicon Alexandre, the youngest of the leaders of Ahomar, a union of small-scale fisherpeople on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 01 (IPS) - When South Korea took the initiative to integrate a development cooperation programme into this year’s World Expo, it stepped up its efforts to gain credibility as a donor on the international stage.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 01 (IPS) - When the 193-member General Assembly, the U.N.'s highest policy-making body, declared water and sanitation a basic human right back in July 2010, the adoption of that divisive resolution was hailed by many as a "historic" achievement.

LISBON, Aug 01 (IPS) - Portugal was traditionally one of the European countries with the lowest levels of drug use, until the 1980s and 1990s, when problematic drug abuse, especially of heroin, became a major problem.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 01 (IPS) - Somalia adopted a  Provisional Constitution Wednesday setting a date for the political transition of the country.

PARIS, Aug 01 (IPS) - The catastrophe following the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactor in March 2011 has turned the old debate on nuclear power into a war of words between international agencies and independent experts with diametrically opposed views.

BANGALORE, Aug 01 (IPS) - Almitra Patel, a civil engineer by qualification, says she was first alerted to India’s huge problem of inadequate waste disposal when she noticed that the frogs in the marshlands near her farmhouse, on the city’s outskirts, had stopped croaking.

HARARE, Aug 01 (IPS) - Tomson Chikowero was ashamed of his job. He did not want anyone finding out what he did to earn a living, so he used to wake up early every morning and leave his home in Hatfield, a residential suburb in Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare, under the cover of darkness.

NAIROBI, Aug 01 (IPS) - On a chilly morning at the Moi International Sports Centre in Nairobi, the largest multi-purpose sports centre in Kenya, 800m world record holder David Rudisha looked like just another athlete.