WASHINGTON, Mar 14 (IPS) - Eighteen Nobel Peace Prize recipients called Thursday for President Barack Obama to take a leadership role in supporting a "historic" internationally binding agreement that would regulate the global arms trade, including instituting a strict ban on arms sales to states involved in egregious human rights abuses.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 14 (IPS) - The world's 132 developing nations, largely part of the global South, are ascending at a pace "unprecedented in its speed and scale", according to the latest Human Development Report (HDR) released Thursday by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Mar 14 (IPS) - Ruth Dreifuss, the former Swiss president and chancellor of the University for Peace, may never have heard of Dennis Ramjattan, and vice versa, although they occupy opposite sides of a longstanding debate in this twin-island state.

MEXICO CITY, Mar 14 (IPS) - As the Mexican government prepares a broad tax reform bill, experts and activists see it as an opportunity to include new "green taxes" aimed at raising funds for curbing pollution.

SANTIAGO, Mar 14 (IPS) - Venezuela will keep in place the regional energy integration policies promoted by the late president Hugo Chávez if he is succeeded by acting president Nicolás Maduro, experts on regional relations told IPS.

RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Mar 14 (IPS) - In an extraordinary move, a civilian has been sentenced to a year's imprisonment for posting a picture on Facebook of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dressed in a Real Madrid soccer outfit and kicking a ball. The sentencing is among several instances of a targeting of media in Palestinian areas.

, Mar 14 (IPS) - After almost two decades of non-stop negotiations, and two years of intense U.S. opposition, the much-delayed and controversial 7.5 billion dollar Iran-Pakistan pipeline is well on its track to full operation in the next 15 months.

DOUALA, Cameroon, Mar 14 (IPS) - The fruit farmers in Njombe, a small town in the coastal Littoral Region of Cameroon, learned a life lesson about "making lemonade out of lemons" - or rather "dried fruit out of fruit" when their land was taken from them by the government and leased to an international farming company.

WASHINGTON, Mar 14 (IPS) - Next year's drawdown of U.S. forces and decline in U.S. aid will leave in its wake an Afghan political system lacking legitimacy and stability, according to interviews with Afghanistan experts, news reports and congressional studies.

WASHINGTON, Mar 13 (IPS) - In unusual public testimony, the U.S. government has publicly stated that no "indefinite detention" is taking place among detainees at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay.