News headlines in November 2012, page 16

DIYARBAKIR, Nov 13 (IPS) - Five MPs from Turkey's main Kurdish political party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), and the Mayor of Diyarbak?r have gone on hunger strike to support a protest by more than 700 Kurdish prison inmates. The prisoners' hunger strike has now lasted 63 days, and spans dozens of prisons across Turkey.

BAMAKO, Nov 13 (IPS) - West African heads of state have restated their determination that no member of Mali's transitional government will be allowed to stand in the country's next presidential election. Their statement has fed a growing debate over who should be allowed to run.

ADDIS ABABA, Nov 13 (IPS) - Many were hoping that recent peace talks between the Ethiopian government and Ogaden rebels would signal an end to the gruelling 18-year-old conflict. The latest round of talks, however, dashed all dreams of peace between the two sides.

MISKHAMAYU, Bolivia, Nov 12 (IPS) - Even before the sun comes up, Reinaldo starts out on the two-hour journey to the school he attends in a small native village in Bolivia, hiking along steep, narrow paths that take him across ravines and rivers.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 12 (IPS) - When the former Human Rights Commission was partially dominated by countries accused of political repression, a U.S. congressman ridiculed the U.N. body where, he said, "inmates were taking over the asylum."

TEGUCIGALPA, Nov 12 (IPS) - Police officers in Honduras are protesting regulatory measures and aptitude tests implemented as part of reforms aimed at purging the police force of corruption and growing links to organised crime.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 12 (IPS) - Khadija Ismayilova has been threatened with blackmail by her own government. She has been branded an "enemy of the state", mainly for her exposés of official corruption.

WASHINGTON, Nov 12 (IPS) - The media did their best to make the U.S. presidential election look important, the altar on which democracy is built. But there has been a problem ever since the Supreme Court legalised unlimited campaign spending (six billion dollars this year), thereby authorising one more freedom of expression, called "commercial speech" even though much of this speech is libellous, often neither true nor relevant.

DURA, Occupied West Bank, Nov 12 (IPS) - Fatmeh Abu Hrar Tabeel has had her first ever breast cancer screening. "It feels good to know, of course. Thanks to god, I am well," the 51-year-old mother of seven told IPS. "Now I can examine myself once a month from home; the doctor showed me how."

SAFED, Northern Israel, Nov 12 (IPS) - It came like a bolt from the blue on this serene city perched in the hills of Galilee. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared on Israel's Channel Two television earlier this month, "I want to see Safed! It's my right to see it, but not to live there."