WASHINGTON, Sep 19 (IPS) - The U.S. public is more concerned about the rise of China – particularly as an economic power – than are elite sectors, including government officials, business leaders, scholars and media figures, according to a major new survey released here Tuesday by several U.S. think tanks.

WASHINGTON, Sep 19 (IPS) - Speaking on Tuesday at her first public address in the United States, Myanmar’s opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said that she supported the lifting of the last remaining U.S. economic sanctions on her country, but also warned that all remaining political prisoners need to be released.

WASHINGTON, Sep 18 (IPS) - Almost two years after popular uprisings swept across the Middle East and North Africa, rights advocates are warning that ominous backsliding is taking place in countries across the region and beyond.

SAN FRANCISCO, U.S., Sep 18 (IPS) - Led by a spirited brass band and waving placards decrying corporate greed, hundreds of occupiers took to San Francisco streets Monday to celebrate Occupy Wall Street’s first birthday, culminating in a ceremony where they symbolically ripped apart loan documents.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 18 (IPS) - The “pacification” of the favelas in this Brazilian city, aimed at driving out armed groups and fighting drug trafficking, has not yet become a fully effective public policy, says Eliana Sousa Silva, who has lived in one of Rio’s shantytowns for nearly 30 years.

DOHA, Sep 18 (IPS) - A suicide car bomber has killed 12 people in the Afghan capital, nine of them foreigners, officials said, in an early-morning attack claimed by an armed group which said it sent a female attacker to avenge an anti-Islam film.

NEW YORK, Sep 18 (IPS) - Amid a heavy police presence, thousands of anti-capitalist activists in marked the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement against the U.S. political and economic system, which they say favours billionaires at the expense of the middle and working class.

GUATEMALA CITY, Sep 18 (IPS) - The Association Agreement between Central America and the European Union (EU) will increase environmental and social pressures on the region, warn experts and activists. But some observers stress its potentially positive impacts.

SHEIKH JARRAH, Occupied East Jerusalem, Sep 18 (IPS) - “See the bullets from the 1948 and 1967 wars,” Badr Abu Ad-Dula says, showing the scars of the old frontline on the outer walls of the building where he and his family of 13 live. “Here’s the Jordanian outpost.” The elderly Palestinian points at a loophole, now a bedroom window.

N’DJAMENA, Sep 18 (IPS) - Chad has more than 400,000 square kilometres of arable land, but poor rainfall and a reliance on basic agricultural techniques have left the country with a grain deficit in the past two years. The government is turning to mechanisation in a bid to improve harvests.