UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 11 (IPS) - Experts on the health of our planet are terrified of the future. They can clearly see the coming collapse of global civilisation from an array of interconnected environmental problems.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 (IPS) - Amidst a growing water crisis in the predominantly arid Middle East and North Africa (MENA), some of the world's most influential water experts will meet next week at the International Water Summit (IWS) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) to look for sustainable solutions.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 11 (IPS) - Teachers at a local primary school here, the Escola Municipal IV Centenário, are trained to help their pupils find cover in case of gun battles.

JERUSALEM, Jan 11 (IPS) - "We feel like we finally live a normal life in a normal country," marvelled a popular radio host. Normalcy – this rare appreciation by Israelis of the privilege to indulge in small talk about the stormy weather that's wreaked the whole region – is so abnormal here.

BULAWAYO, Jan 11 (IPS) - It took Gily Ncube's daughters two weeks to sell enough chickens to raise the 18 dollars needed to buy the morphine tablets their mother takes every four hours.

ATHENS/WARSAW, Jan 11 (IPS) - Publicly funded research is paying towards security systems that the EU is inviting major multinationals to put together to keep unwanted migrants out.

MEXICO CITY, Jan 11 (IPS) - A lot of attention goes to the U.S.-made weapons in the hands of criminal groups in this Latin American country. But there is little talk of another problem: the large number of light weapons in the hands of civilians.

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (IPS) - Even as government negotiators from around the world prepare to gather next week for a final round of talks on a new international treaty limiting the use of mercury, scientists and activists are warning that the draft treaty is both too weak and too limited in scope to have a major impact.

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, Jan 10 (IPS) - They belong to the Amazon of Bolivia, where their people, the Moxena nation, are found, and they are brothers. Francisco and Alfonso Ichu Tamo came to this southern city to become the premier makers of musical instruments.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 10 (IPS) - When the General Assembly wound down its 67th session in late December, it underscored the key role for energy in the U.N.'s post-2015 economic agenda by declaring 2014-2024 the "Decade of Sustainable Energy for All".