LISBON, Aug 16 (IPS) - The elderly have taken to the streets in Portugal to protest drastic public sector pension cuts announced this week by the government of conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 16 (IPS) - The United States, which has refused to cut off its hefty 1.3 billion dollars in annual military aid to Egypt, continues to argue that depriving arms to the 438,500-strong security forces will only "destabilise" the crisis-ridden country.

PHNOM PENH, Aug 16 (IPS) - Following the death of his parents when he was just four, Samlain Chey, now 22, found himself living on the streets along the river near the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. Until he met a social worker from Mith Samlanh.

MONTEVIDEO, Aug 16 (IPS) - Representatives of 38 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean meeting this week in the Uruguayan capital urged governments in the region to consider modifying their laws on abortion, which are among the most restrictive in the world.

WASHINGTON, Aug 16 (IPS) - The recently restarted talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are the only peaceful political activity amidst ongoing violence in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere in the Arab world.

CAIRO, Aug 16 (IPS) - As Egypt's political crisis escalates, supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi accuse the local media – both state-run and private – of ignoring pro-Morsi demonstrations and covering up massive rights abuses.

ADDIS ABABA, Aug 16 (IPS) - Foreign aid workers are increasingly becoming targets of corrupt officials within the Somali government and the Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab.

SANA’A, Aug 16 (IPS) - As he gets ready to go to a café in Yemen's capital Sana'a, Husam tucks his long tresses inside a hood before getting into the back of his friend's car.

SRINAGAR, India, Aug 16 (IPS) - Zareena Bano has had to skip school 17 times this year to help out on her family's farm in Tangchekh village in the northern Indian state of Kashmir.

WASHINGTON, Aug 16 (IPS) - One day after the killing by the Egyptian army and security forces of hundreds of civilian protestors, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced the cancellation of joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercises scheduled for September.