GENEVA, Nov 22 (IPS) - There are numerous reasons to believe that the forces that have been driving growth in developing and emerging economies since 2009 cannot be sustained over the medium term. At the same time, it is impossible to return to the extremely favourable international economic conditions that prevailed before the eruption of the global crisis.

NEW DELHI, Nov 22 (IPS) - One day after voting against a United Nations General Assembly draft resolution seeking to abolish the death penalty, India executed Pakistani national Mohammad Ajmal Kasab for the November 2008 terror rampage in Mumbai that left 166 people dead.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 22 (IPS) - A Nigerian diviner dances and sings next to a Brazilian priest of the Candomblé religion, brought to this South American country by African slaves, that is now being rescued from oblivion in school texts on national history and culture.

RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Nov 22 (IPS) - As people anxiously wait to see if the newly-signed ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas will hold, local and international human rights groups are calling for investigations into Israeli human rights abuses committed during its eight-day assault on the Gaza Strip, including flagrant attacks on journalists.

KARACHI, Nov 22 (IPS) - Medical practitioners at the National Institute of Child Health (NICH), a leading government-run children's hospital in Karachi, hope that this will be the last winter they have to treat a stream of children suffering from pneumonia.

WARANGAL, India, Nov 22 (IPS) - In a country notorious for the inability to deal with the waste it generates, municipal officials in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are now resorting to making waste management a competitive sport, in their bid to cajole the entire nation to clean up.

GAZA CITY, Nov 22 (IPS) - Fouad Hijazi was watching the 7 pm news with his wife and eight children when a missile fired by an Israeli F-16 hit their house in Jabalyia refugee camp, Gaza's most densely populated area.

ADDIS ABABA, Nov 22 (IPS) - The world received contradictory signals about Ethiopia's human rights record when in the same week it was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a major German charity closed its Ethiopian office in protest against a restrictive political environment.

WASHINGTON, Nov 22 (IPS) - President Barack Obama may have lost interest in the Middle East, to paraphrase Soviet leader Leon Trotsky's famous epigram about war, but the Middle East is interested in him.

JERUSALEM, Nov 21 (IPS) - Ending Israel's first military operation since the Arab Spring changed the Middle East depended on both the diplomatic blitz exerted on Israel and Hamas and the extent of the military blows exchanged between them. As for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the ceasefire must live at least until his re-election.