News headlines in February 2013, page 2

VIENNA, Feb 27 (IPS) - A UN summit designed to promote tolerance, plurality and global inclusiveness of civilisations has opened with dire warnings of the threat of religious and ethnic intolerance – at the same time as many states that have ostensibly signed up to the UN's ideals continue to enforce laws and practices restricting religious freedom, and implicitly marginalising communities.

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (IPS) - More than three dozen national security officials, members of Congress and military leaders are warning of the threat climate change poses to U.S. national security, the latest in an indicator that U.S. intelligence and national security circles are increasingly worried about a warming planet.

HAVANA, Feb 27 (IPS) - Each of Cuba's 168 municipalities faces the challenge of designing its own strategic development which, as well as economic and social progress, minimises the impact of extreme weather and other problems caused by global warming.

ATLANTA, Georgia, Feb 27 (IPS) - The right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and private education management firms are pushing for new "parent trigger" laws in states across the U.S. by lobbying many Republican and some Democratic legislators to make it easier to convert more traditional public schools to charter schools.

COLOMBO, Feb 27 (IPS) - Lahandapurege Ariyawathie feels she got off lightly - if returning home with 24 nails embedded in your body is lucky.

KARONGA, Malawi, Feb 27 (IPS) - Since he was nine years old, Martin Mhango from Karonga village in northern Malawi has known no other livelihood than fishing. And for the last 33 years he has been fishing freely on Lake Malawi – that is, until last October when he was detained and beaten by Tanzanian security forces.??

NAIROBI, Feb 27 (IPS) - When Kenya's only female presidential candidate, Martha Karua, dismissed electoral opinion pollsters who claimed that she stood a mere one percent chance of being elected to office, many said she did so because the results had not favoured her. 

HAVANA, Feb 27 (IPS) - The Cuban National Assembly, the parliament, has just passed a historic milestone: the visible turning point when one momentous and complex phase in the life of the country begins to come to a close, and a door opens on a future that, however hard to predict, will in many ways be different.

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Feb 27 (IPS) - Killer heat waves, floods and storms are increasingly caused by climate change, new research reveals.

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (IPS) - Ending a long and controversial battle, the U.S. Senate Tuesday voted 58-41 to confirm former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel as President Barack Obama's new secretary of defence.